
Book 




p 



IMEODOIE 




Twenty- Sixth President^ 



The United States. 



ATi 



A 



YIPIICAL /^PHEROCAINI 



BY ^y) €ftf tif 

CHARLES EUGENE BANKS 

AND 

LEROY ARMSTRONG m 



Introductory Chapters by 

GEN. JOSEPH WHEELER AND 
OPIE READ «i^ tftf 

American Citizen Co. 

CH ICAGO 




^^^^©^^r^^^^^^^^ 






Copyright 1901 
By E. R. DUMONT 



By Transfer 
Treasury Dept, 

SEP 2 3 1938 




TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

POEM, by Grace Duffie Boylan 7 

INTEODUCTION, by General Joseph Wheeler ... 9 

"A TYPICAL AMEEICAN"; introduction by Opie Read 25 

CHAPTER I.— Theodore Roosevelt 33 

Sketch of His Life. Marked Characteristics of the 
Man. A Product of the Age. Blood of Heroes 
in His Veins. In an Age of Materialism He Stands 
as the Great Exponent of the Virtues. His First 
Historical Work. Ambitious to Do Deeds Rather 
than Chronicle Them. 

CHAPTER II.— "Birth, Lineage AND Boyhood" ... 46 
Descended from Good Old Holland Stock, His Ancestors 
Among the Earliest American Pioneers. Delicate 
in Health, His Masterful Spirit Wins for Him a 
Stalwart Frame. Early Develops the Qualities of a 
Leader. 

CHAPTER III.-College Life 57 

Enters College at the Age of Eighteen. Develops a 
Taste for Hunting and Natural History. Is Active 
in all College Sports, Especially. Wrestling and 
Boxing. Graduates in 1880 with High Honors. 
Membership in Clubs, Etc. 

CHAPTER IV.— A New York Assemblyman .... 72 
At Once Attracts Attention to Himself as an Uncom- 
promising Foe to Machine Rule and a Friend of 
Good Government. Striking Promise of a Remark- 
able Public Career. Not Even the Danger of 
Bodily Violence Could Deter Him. A Revelation to 
the Rowdies. 



Hv-X 



2 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER v.— In National and City Politics ... 92 
Recognized as a Factor in National Affairs. A Leader 
of Men, Loyal to the Best Traditions of His Party, 
but Intensely an American. Maintaining a Splen- 
did Independence. The Forlorn Hope in the Eace 
for Election as Mayor of New York City. 

CHAPTER VI.— Ranching in the Bad Lands .... 109 
Comrade with the Cowboys. Wins the Confidence and 
Esteem of Hunters, Ranchmen and Pioneers. 
' ' Busting ' ' Bronchos. Adventures with Wild 
Beasts. Thrilling Fight with a Grizzly. 

CHAPTER VII.— Roosevelt as an Author .... 129 
First Author to Become President. Beginning as Edi- 
tor of His College Paper, He Develops Striking 
Literary Talent. Success of His First Work, 
"Naval War of 1812," "Winning of the West," 
' ' The Strenuous Life and other Essays, " " Oliver 
Cromwell. ' ' A Voluminous Writer. 

CHAPTER VIII.— Home Life and Religious Tendencies 153 
Romance of His Boyhood. In the Home and Family. 
"All Children Should Have Just as Good a Time 
as They Possibly Can." Holding to the Faith of 
His Fathers. An American Citizen Can Take His 
Bible and the Constitution of the United States into 
the Caucus. 

CHAPTER IX.— Crusade for the Merit System . . 170 
Roosevelt's Work in the New York Legislature Bears 
Fruit. Appointed Civil Service Commissioner by 
President Harrison. Shows Great Preparation for 
the Work. Offends Spoilsmen of Both Parties. 
Ably Supported in the Senate and House. 

CHAPTER X.— Purifying City Politics 183 

Roosevelt Appointed President of Police Board of the 
City of New York. "I Will Enforce the Law." 
Merit System Governs in Police Force. Sunday 
Closing Law Made Operative. Attempted Assas- 
sination by Dynamite. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. €$ 

PAGE 

CHAPTEE XI.— Assistant Secretary of the Navy . 199 
KebuiWs the American Navy. Introduces Target Prac- 
tice ^\ith Powder and Ball. Active in Prej^aration 
for War with Spain. Advises Ordering Commodore 
Dewey to the China Station. Kesigns for Active 
Duty in the Field. 

CHAPTER XII.— Formation of the "Eough Eiders" 217 
Friendship for General Leonard "Wood. A Month WeU 
Saved. Cowboys, Hunters and Clubmen Eally to 
His Standard. The Best Fighting Material that 
Ever Marched to the Field. Drilling, Preparing 
and Embarking. Landing on Cuban Soil. 

CHAPTEE XIII.-SERncE ix Cuba 237 

Brigaded with the Forces of a Fighting Man, The 
Affair at Las Guasimas, and the Loss of Precious 
Lives. The Eough Eiders Prove Their Heroism in 
Battle. From the Trenches to the Hospital. Graves 
in Alien Soil. After Peace, the Eeturn Home. 

CHAPTEE XIY.— Eeturn of the Eegiment .... 263 
The Eound Eobin, Ordered Back to the United States. 
Sick, Wounded and Well on the Voyage Home. 
Landing of Eough Eiders at Montauk Point. 
Angels of Mercy in the Hospitals, Mustered Out. 
Back to the Old Life, where a Eough Eider May 
Eide. 

CHAPTEE XY.— Go\-ERNOR of New York 288 

Empire State Jubilantly Eewards Colonel Eoosevelt with 
Its Highest Office. Inaugurates Eeform in Every 
Branch of the Public Service. Establishes the 
Principle of Street Franchise Taxation. Dewey 
Day in New York. 

CHL\PTEB X^^.- Eoosevelt in Chicago 308 

Guest of Honor at the Hamilton Club Appomattox Day 
Banquet. Wonderful Memory Shown in His Eecog- 
nition of Individual Eough Eiders. Characteristic 
Incidents of the Man. First Enunciation of the 
Gospel of a Strenuous Life. 



4 TABLE OP CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XVII.— Honors Thrust Upon Him . . . 336 
Nominated for Vice-President Against His Emphatic 
Protest. Sinks Personal Preference at the (Jail of 
Public Duty. Striking Figure in the Campaign. 
Presiding Over the Senate. Seeks Eecreation in a 
Post-election Hunt for Mountain Lions. 

CHAPTER XVIll.— Assassination of President Mc- 

KlNLEY 354 

Leon Czolgosz Strikes Down the Head of the Nation. 
Country Plunged in Sorrow. Hope and Despair 
Alternate. "Nearer, My God, To Thee." End of 
a Noble Life. The Republic Pauses While Its 
President is Laid to Rest. 

CHAPTER XIX.— Succeeds to the Presidency ... 369 
Theodore Roosevelt Takes Oath of Office. Informed of 
His Chief's Death While Hunting in the Adiron- 
dacks. Solemn Scenes at the Administration of the 
Sublime Obligation. Declares He Will Carry Out 
McKinley's Policy. 

CHAPTER XX.— Chief Executive of the Nation . . 379 
President Roosevelt Takes the Helm of Government in 
Washington. First Official Act. Aims to Break Up 
Solid South by New Methods. Summons Booker T. 
Washington to a Conference. Appoints Reform 
Democrats to Office. Friend to Labor. 

CHAPTER XXI.— The Future 394 

What May Reasonably Be Expected from Such a Presi- 
dent of Such a Nation. Believing in the Monroe 
Doctrine and American Control of the Canal at the 
Isthmus, in Reciprocity and Expansion, Mr. Roose- 
velt Is Strong, Upright, Honest and Aggressive, and 
Implicitly Trusted by a United People. America 's 
Golden Era. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Theodore Eoosevelt, President of the United States . . 

Frontispiece 

Mr. Eoosevelt 's Eesidence at Oyster Bay 40 

Eoom in Mr, Eoosevelt 's House at Oyster Bay .... 48 
President Eoosevelt in 1880, and also at the Age of Nine 

Years 64 

Starting for the Hunt, Keystone Eanch 112 

"Busting" a Broncho 120' 

President Eoosevelt on Horseback 144 

President and Mrs. Eoosevelt with Family 16Q 

Mr. Eoosevelt at Home 168 

Mr. Eoosevelt, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy . . . 208 

Mr. Eoosevelt in Eough Eider Uniform 224 

Colonel Eoosevelt as a Eough Eider 232 

Major-General Joseph Wheeler 240 

The Charge up San Juan Hill 256 

Landing at Montauk Point. Colonel Eoosevelt and Gen- 
eral Joseph "Wheeler 280 

William McKinley 312 

Colonel Eoosevelt During the Campaign of 1900 . . . 344 

A Fine Bobcat 352 

President Eoosevelt Conferring with Senator Hanna . . 356 
Exterior of Mr. Ansley Wilcox's Eesidence, at Buffalo . 362 
President Eoosevelt at the Martyred President's Casket . 366 
The Mountain Guide Finds Mr. Roosevelt in the Adiron- 

dacks 372 

Library of Mr. Ansley Wilcox at Buffalo 376 

The White House, Washington, D. C 384 

Baby Quentin, the Youngest of President Roosevelt 's 

Family 392 

The New White House According to Mr. and ^Irs. Mc- 
Kinley 's Plans 400 

5 



i^ooseveLX. 



Who goes ihefe ? y\q /\mericaq ! 

Braiq and spirit ar|cl bfaWr] and h\ea.f\, 
'TvVas for him ihat Ihe qalions spared 

Gachj \o Ihje years i^S qobles^ partj 
Jill from ihe Dulchi, Ihe (^aul and QeW 
Blossomed il-|e soul of l^ooseVelh 

^ludenl, trooper and geqileman 

LeVel-lidded Wilh times and kings- 

His the Voice for a comrade's cheer, 
I-jis the ear When tl-]e saber rings. 

T]efo shjades of tqe old days nrjelt 

In the auick pulse oP l^ooseVelt. 

l-|aqd that's molded to hilt of s^oi'd J 

l-|e'art that e\/ef has laughed at fearj 

I'ype and pattern of ciVic pridej 
Wit and grace of the caValier: 

A^ll that his fathjers prayed aqd felt 

(fleams irj the glance of F(oose\/elt. 

Who goes thjere? l\n /\merican ! 

/Aan to the core — as men should be. 
Let him] pass through the lines alone. 

Type of the sons of Liberty. 
l-|ere, v/t^ere his fathers' fatt^ers dWeit, 
t^oqor and faith] for I^ooseVelt! 

GRACE DUFFIE BOYLAN 



INTRODUCTION BY GENERAL JOSEPH 
WHEELER. 

It is no flattery to say that Theodore Roose- 
velt possesses to a remarkable degree the best 
characteristics of the ''typical American." He 
is learned, cultured, progressive and brave, an 
athlete, sportsman, ranchman, author, orator, 
politician, statesman and soldier. 

I first knew this distinguished gentleman 
when, in ilpril, 18^9, he appeared in Washington 
as one of the three commissioners of Civil Serv- 
ice. 

He came with the high reputation acquired as 
leader in the New York Assembly at the age of 
twenty-three, as a prominent champion of reform 
and opponent of Blaine at the Chicago conven- 
tion when only twenty-five; as a candidate for 
mayor of New York city when barely twenty- 
eight, receiving as he did a larger percentage of 
votes than had ever before been polled by a 
Republican candidate, and as an author with 



10 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

more distinction than is usually enjoyed by a 
man then only thirty years of age. 

Mr. Roosevelt was solicited to accept an 
appointment as Civil Service Commissioner on 
account of his long and relentless warfare on 
political jobbery and corruj^tion. He was a civil 
service reformer and an intense opponent of the 
spoils system. He entered upon his duties with / 
vigor and raised the office to one of very great 
importance, and by his persistent efforts con- 
stantly enlarged and increased the power and 
usefulness of the commission, never losing an 
opportunity to press upon President Harrison 
extensions and improvements which he regarded 
as advisable and important. 

He seemed to carry with him a certain mo- 
mentum in his progressive policy, and as he him- 
self expressed it : " There is no shell separating 
the commission from the outer world. All is per- 
fectly open." His policy and administration of 
the commission was often opposed and severely 
criticised by both his own and the opposing 
party, but in every case he promptly took the 
public into his confidence, gave all the facts to the 
press, and invited the most searching inquiry. 
This open, honest candor acquired the confidence 



INTRODUCTION. 



11 



of the country and kept him in the public eye 
during his entire six years of this duty. 

When Mr. Cleveland became President, 
Roosevelt insisted upon a revision of the Civil 
Service rules, and procured an order from the 
Democratic President which added some thirty 
thousand positions to the classified service, bring- 
ing the total number of offices under the control 
of the commission up to 85,135. 

Mr. Roosevelt devoted himself to showing 
Southern Congressmen (substantially all Demo- 
crats) that they were receiving a full share of 
the public patronage. I had many talks with 
him upon this subject, and he took especial pains 
to go over the records and point out the localities 
from which the appointees came, and he often 
had much to say regarding his Southern ances- 
try, showing in a way which he could not hide 
that his Southern relations and the Southern 
people in general had a very warm place in his 
big heart. 

Feeling that he had accomplished the pur- 
pose for which he accepted duty in the Civil 
Service, he, after more than six years of labor, 
resigned to take upon himself the burden of duty 
as Police Commissioner in the city of New York. 



12 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

When in the legislative assembly he had been 
chairman of a committee which investigated the 
New York Police Department. His report showed 
that he had very decided views upon this sub- 
ject, and his study of the subject while in the 
legislature in a measure prepared him for this 
new duty. 

He was notliing unless vigorous and forceful. 
Many were loud in praise, but he seemed to heed 
them not. To those who denounced him, he said : 
' ' I am placed here to enforce the law as I find it. 
I shall enforce it. If you don't like the law, 
repeal it. ' ' 

I met Mr. Roosevelt at his office, and he 
showed the same enthusiastic devotion, and de- 
lighted to explain his efforts toward reform and 
good, honest government. 

When Mr. McKinley became President he 
selected Mr. Roosevelt as his Assistant Secretary 
of the Navy. Here was a new field of operations 
for his tireless energies. He had already written 
a history of the navy of the United States, and 
this had required a research into the archives at 
Washington, and into the reports of the British 
and French officers and the logs of British and 
French ships, all of which was an excellent edu- 



INTEODUCTION. 



13 



cation for the high position to which he was so 
suddenly called. 

Mr. Roosevelt in this history of our navy 
says : ' ' There were no better seamen in the world 
than the American Jack ; he had been bred to his 
work from infancy, and had been ofe in a fishing 
dory almost as soon as he could walk. When 
he grew older he shipped as a merchantman, or 
whaler, and in warlike times, when our merchant 
marine was compelled to rely pretty much on 
itself for protection, each craft had to be handled 
well ; all that were not were soon weeded out by a 
process of natural selection of which the agents 
were French picaroons, Spanish buccaneers, and 
Malay pirates. It was a rough school, but it 
taught Jack to be both skilful and self-reliant." 

In June, 1897, in addressing the naval cadets 
he repeated Washington's warning : " To be pre- 
pared for war is the most effectual means to pro- 
mote peace," and with great emphasis he uttered 
these words : 

"All the great masterful races have been 
fighting races. Cowardice in a race, as in an 
individual, is the unpardonable sin." 

About this time, a year before our clash of 
arms with Spain, he said : ' ' The enemies we may 



14 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

have to face will come from over the sea; they 
may come from Europe, or they may come from 
Asia. Events move fast in the West; but this 
generation has been forced to see that they move 
even faster in the oldest East. Our interests are 
as great in the Pacific as in the Atlantic, in the 
Hawaiian Islands as in the West Indies. Merely 
for the protection of our own shores, we need a 
great navy; and what is more, we need it to 
protect our interests in the islands from which 
it is possible to command our shores and to pro- 
tect our commerce on the high seas. ' ' 

He early became impressed that war with 
Spain was inevitable, and to prepare for it he 
infused life, vigor, snap and energy into every 
branch of the service. 

He hastened the work upon new ships and 
repairs on old ones. He encouraged recruiting 
the navy to its full strength and increased the 
supply of coal at every station. He personally 
inspected the war- vessels and neglected nothing 
which would add to naval efficiency. 

Senator Cushman K. Davis said : 

''If it had not been for Roosevelt we would 
not have been able to strike the blow that we did 
at Manila. It needed just Roosevelt's energy 
and promptness. ' ' 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

The records of the Department, February 25, 
1898, show this confidential cablegram from 
Roosevelt to Commodore Dewey: ''Order the 
squadron, except Monocacy, to Hong-Kong. 
Keep full of coal. In the event of declaration of 
war with Spain your duty will be to see that 
the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic 
coast, and then offensive operations in Philip- 
pine Islands. Keep Olympia until further 
orders. ' ' 

I saw Mr. Roosevelt many times during this 
trying period and like all others with whom he 
came into contact, I was deeply impressed by his 
earnest, convincing arguments. 

When war was actually declared, he said : 

' ' My work here is done. I must get into the 
fight myself. ' ' 

It would extend the scope of this article too 
far for me to more than allude to the correspond- 
ence between our distinguished Secretary Long 
and Assistant Secretary Roosevelt, in which he 
was urged to withhold his resignation and remain 
in the Department where he was doing such val- 
uable service ; but he had determined his course 
of duty, and in May we find him with a commis- 
sion for himself as lieutenant-colonel, and with a 



16 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

colonel's commission for the then almost un- 
known Dr. Leonard Wood, en route to Texas to 
raise what was popularly known as Roosevelt's 
Regiment of Rough Riders, and officially as the 
First Regiment of United States Volunteer Cav- 
alry. He only demanded good arms for his men 
and the chance to get them against the enemy. 
The rest to be left in his hands. 

When it became apparent that the troops at 
Tampa would compose the first expedition of 
active operations, Roosevelt, then far off in 
Texas, burdened the telegraph lines with dis- 
patches until orders reached him to go with his 
fine regiment and become a part of the cavalry 
division which I commanded at that place. 
Learning the hour of his arrival, I met him with 
staff-officers at the train, expecting that the regi- 
ment would need much after their long journey. 
Roosevelt, Colonel Wood and other officers were 
all in fine spirits, and assured me they had every- 
thing and that they would be comfortable in the 
cars that night. The next day I put them into 
camp, and in an hour the entire regiment was 
out upon drill. 

It was here that it was my privilege to enjoy 
my greatest intimacy with this young officer. 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

This was very close, as their brigade commander, 
General Young, was at Lakeland, thirty miles 
distant, with his other two regiments, and, there- 
fore, the Rough Riders reported direct to me, 
their division commander. 

Both Roosevelt and Wood urged me to fre- 
quent inspections, to be present at their drills, to 
examine into their equipment and administra- 
tion, and they frequently came to me, generally 
together, laying before me their methods of drill, 
discipline, etc. They were anxious to be assured 
if their methods were the best, and that they be 
corrected if any change or improvement could 
be suggested. They had tactics and army regu- 
lations constantly in hand, and I was surprised 
to see how thoroughly they had become informed 
upon all that pertained to their duties as regi- 
mental commanders. 

June 7 came, and with it Admiral Sampson *s 
telegram : ' ' If ten thousand men were here, city 
and fleet would be ours within forty-eight hours. 
Every consideration demands immediate army 
movement. If delayed, city will be defended 
more strongly by guns taken from fleet. ' ' 

It was in the quiet darkness of night that an 
officer of General Shafter's staff came to my tent 



18 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

with orders from Washington for us to embark 
at daylight the next morning at Port Tampa, 
distant nine miles from our camp. Immediately 
all was activity. Eoosevelt and Wood were 
before me in a few moments, received their 
orders, and in an incredibly short time their 
legiment, with all its equipments, was by the 
side of the railroad, ready and waiting for the 
cars. Soon after daylight Port Tampa was 
reached, and we were soon on shipboard, the 
promptness with which the Eough Riders were 
embarked being largely due to the indomitable 
push of the young lieutenant-colonel. The delay 
at Port Tampa until June 17 was caused by the 
false report that Spanish war-vessels threatened 
the course we were to sail. 

On June 20 we reached Daiquiri, Cuba. 

On the morning of the 22d the navy, with 
steam and naphtha launches towing large strings 
of boats, commenced landing our troops. 

General Shafter put Lawton's division and 
Bates' brigade before us. 

We felt this keenly, and knowing that the pur- 
pose was to get ashore promptly, we commenced 
landing with our own ship 's boats, rowed by our 
men. 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

Roosevelt's energy and push helped very- 
much in this effort, and before night we had 
landed 964 officers and men of the cavalry divi- 
sion. 

Siboney is on the ocean and is nine miles 
nearer Santiago than Daiquiri. 

On the 22d General Lawton was ordered with 
his division, about five thousand strong, to march 
upon and capture the enemy at Siboney, so that 
the remainder of the troops and supplies could be 
landed at that place. 

Lawton reached Siboney on the 23d, but 
found that the enemy had already evacuated that 
place and had taken the road toward Santiago. 

At noon on the 23d General Shafter had not 
heard from Lawton and he ordered the com- 
mander of the cavalry division, with the 964 men 
of his command, to proceed to Siboney and put 
his advance close to the enemy. 

The division commander ordered Young, 
Wood and Roosevelt forward and hastened on in 
person, and finally found the enemy stationed on 
the Santiago road between two and three miles 
from Siboney. He reconnoitered the Spanish 
position and after dark returned to Siboney. 
Before daylight these 964 dismounted cavalry- 



20 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

men were en march, and at a little after seven 
they attacked, and after a severe fight defeated 
a large Spanish force under Lieutenant-General 
Linares. 

This was Eoosevelt's first experience under 
fire, and his superb conduct immediately estab- 
lished him as a brave and intrepid soldier. 

The official report of the division commander 
said: ''The magnificent and brave work done 
by the regiment, under the lead of Colonel Wood, 
testifies to his courage and skill. The energy and 
determination of this officer had been marked 
from the moment he reported to me at Tampa, 
Florida, and I recommended him for the consid- 
eration of the Government. I must rely upon his 
report to do justice to his officers and men, but I 
desire personally to add that all that I have said 
regarding Colonel Wood applies equally to Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Roosevelt. ' ' 

On July 1, on account of the sickness of Gen- 
eral Young, his brigade fell under the command 
of Colonel AVood, and the Rough Riders' regi- 
ment was commanded by Colonel Roosevelt dur- 
ing the San Juan battle and in all the engage- 
ments which terminated in the surrender of the 
Spanish army. 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

My endorsement upon Colonel Roosevelt's 
report contained these words: "Colonel Roose- 
velt and his entire command deserve high com- 
mendation. ' ' I also recommended and requested 
that a gold medal be awarded him for his gal- 
lantry at San Juan. 

The conduct of Colonel Roosevelt was brave 
and- soldierly. He was always at the front, 
always active, always caring for his men and 
always solicitous in attending to every duty. 

In August we sailed together upon the Miami 
for Montauk Point. He had become colonel of 
the regiment, and his excellent discipline and 
administration upon shipboard deserved high 
commendation. 

I saw much of him on the voyage, which 
lasted something over a week. I many times 
repeated that his party would immediately seek 
him as their candidate for Governor of New 
York, and that his wonderful civil career, sup- 
plemented by his short but very brilliant record 
as a soldier, would cause the American people to 
finally elect him to the highest office within their 
gift. This expression of mine was published 
very generally in the papers just after we landed, 
and I think this view was very general among 



22 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

those who had followed Colonel Roosevelt's 
career from the time he entered public life. 

The first prediction was verified three days 
after we landed by a formal tender of the nomi- 
nation for Governor. 

His distinguished career in that high position 
is familiar to the people of the entire country, 
and especially to those of the Empire State. 

His reluctant consent to accept the office of 
Vice-President is fresh in our memory. 

The fearful tragedy which caused the death 
of William McKinley, the most loved of all our 
Presidents, is constantly before us. We see it in 
emblems of mourning everywhere, in every city, 
town and hamlet in our land. We see it in the 
sad faces of our people in all walks of life. 

We realize the extent of our country's loss 
when we contemplate the perfect public, as well 
as private, life of this great and good man. 

We appreciate it also when we see the pros- 
perity of our country during all the period of his 
administration, and especially in the preserva- 
tion of our prestige as a nation and the glorious 
record of our arms on both the land and se^. 
And in all the nation's sadness no one has fdt 
the bereavement more than he who must bear the 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

burdens and responsibilities which, in a sudden 
and unexpected moment, have been thrust upon 
him. That this new duty will be honestly, wisely 
and well performed those who know Theodore 
Roosevelt cannot for a moment doubt, and I 
believe that the dying moments of our martyred 
President were made more tranquil by the 
thought that his efforts for the glory, prosperity 
and happiness of our countrj^ would be continued 
by his successor with wisdom, courage and deter- 
mination. 



rct-u^ C(J-&.l£^^ 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 



Roosevelt represents the entire American 
nation. He is the first President of the New 
United States. His antecedents make him the 
typical American. He inherited no prejudices. 
He owes party allegiance to no political machine. 
A hero before the election, he is now an inspira- 
tion to every American boy. Though born in 
Mew York, the entire country claims him. His 
mother was from Georgia, and he himself was a 
cowboy in the West. One of his uncles was a 
commodore in the Confederate navy, and he 
recently remarked that more than half of the 
Rough Riders were the sons of men who fought 
in the army of the South. It would be difficult to 
find a man so '' geographically universal." For 
the first time in our history a man of letters is 
at the head of the Government. Nearly all of 
our Presidents have been strong and graceful 
writers on economic subjects— some of them 
have made startling phrases and have dealt in 



26 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

periods that would put to shame the literary 
hack; but Roosevelt is an all-round literary 
worker. He is prepared to write anything, on any 
subject— adventure, philosoph}--, international 
law. His education is thorough; he represents 
the college student and the college athlete. He 
is of the new and the old. While he reveres the 
traditions of his grandfather, he recognizes the 
force of his brother. With him old things have 
become new. He is the epitome of David's 
strength. Old things may have been wise for 
that day, but new things represent our power 
this day. If the man who is struggling on the 
hill-side will only stop to think of this fact it 
may be of advantage to him. We revere the 
past, but tradition may have hampered us. 
America, the most progressive of nations, may 
have been hampered by tradition. 

For their day our forefathers were unques- 
tionably wise. To them the Constitution was a 
dead-set faith. At that time man's vision 
extended only to the limit bordering his lands. 
Beyond that was dark experiment. Shrinking 
within the limits of a narrow shell, *^ hands off" 
was the nation's watchword. Broad-minded 
Jeffersonism did not comprehend the entire 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN". li 

world. It did not gather the spreading force of 
geography. Isolation was his watchword and 
the national cry of his successors. "Hands off" 
they said, and our Congressmen were on that 
platform elected. Europe smiled, and we con- 
tented ourselves with what they condemned as 
our narrowness. 

Years passed, and we had a merciless war. 
Premiers said, ''I told you so." There was no 
hope for America. With the hot wax of impul- 
siveness, she had sealed the letter of her doom. 
Germany, believing in the failure of all republics, 
gathered herself into a sardonic laugh. Eng- 
land, though a monarchy— the father, the mother 
of all modern republics— cried "Long live the 
queen, ' ' and yet mourned for us. Our war came 
to an end. In one part of the country there 
seemed to be chaos. Senators said, "We have 
failed. ' ' But out of that chaos came order. Up 
arose leaders of men who declared that secession 
had been a failure. They joined the Govern- 
ment without having changed their principle of 
the rights of States. Upon that platform they 
were elected, and the world of mankind was 
forced to declare that history had been baffled. 
The old order of things, the kings and queens, 



28 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

said they, were sleeping. Soon they will wake 
up. Rome taught us that such a thing could not 
be. Ancient Egypt declared its failure. Modern 
France laughs with us. The French revolution 
was a failure. Therefore this thing cannot 
stand. They called it a thing. They had lost 
sight of immortality. The assassin lifted his 
weapon as if to prove that monarchy was the 
only enduring form of government. Presidents 
sank down to die, but the Government still lived. 
Office may be ephemeral, but the people are eter- 
nal. The crown did not know this. They said 
that the scepter was God's word. We have 
taught the world that this is wrong. The people 
are immortal. The death of McKinley proved 
the ever-enduring life of his nation. Before the 
day of enlightenment such a death would have 
meant chaos. The education of man means the 
eternal element of society. Presidents die; the 
country lives. 

But confidence is the essence of prosperity. 
Without confidence we are unsteady of gaze, fix- 
ing cross-eyes upon uncertainty. With confi- 
dence we are strong, and Roosevelt gives us 
strength. They said that he was lacking in dig- 
nity and he became the most dignified of men. 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 29 

They said that he might not be executive, and 
one word put the nation at rest. They acknowl- 
edged that he was brave, but they said that 
bravery was not wisdom. The bravest were the 
wisest men of Rome. Bravery, sobered with 
responsibility, is the most conservative ruler. 
They did not know tliis at first but they know it 
now. Roosevelt is a patriot, and of such is the 
safe statesman composed. Men who stood closest 
to him were astonished. He surprised his most 
intimate friends. They had not taken into 
account liis devoted study of governments. Now 
they wonder at our short-sightedness. While rid- 
ing in a carriage toward the McKinley house, 
Roosevelt pointed to a large building and 
remarked: ''There is the future President for 
all time. ' ' It was a public school. Some of the 
men who were with him did not understand this, 
but some of them did ; and one man, a Congress- 
man, reached over and took his hand. To Roose- 
velt old men came and centered their hope. 
They felt that American institutions were safe. 
In him they knew was centered the entire coun- 
try. At Canton were men of every party. For 
the first time in the history of the States there 
was no political creed. America was united 



30 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

against sorrow— against the world. At the steps 
of the house of woe the new President spoke 
words which must appeal to every American. 
"Boys"— he did not say ''gentlemen," he did 
not say ''fellow citizens," he said "boys," for 
his mind had flown back to a time when he was 
fighting for his country— "Boys, we must stand 
together. We have met at the bier of one whom 
we loved. He was the product of the entire coun- 
try. We are the product of all the country. He 
loved us and we loved him. Among you I see 
men from Texas and men from Maine. Is it not 
a glory to know that we are all as one? They 
predicted that this could not be. We have shown 
them their error. I have one word to pledge you 
—that we are all of us American citizens. My 
life and my work belong to you. I am not your 
ruler but your friend in council. I ask no higher 
honor than to serve my country. The North and 
the South have passed away, and we have become 
as one. These soldiers that you see are but the 
expressive force of a State— Ohio. They are the 
sons of the men who followed our dead chieftain 
to the war. Some of them were on the other side. 
Let us honor them, for they are representative 
of our country. Among you occasionally I catch 



A TYPICAL AMEEICAN. 31 

tlie glimpse of a countenance which I saw in bat- 
tle—at a time when we charged up a hill. And 
to you I would extend my love and my sympathy. 
The nation has called upon us to do our duty. 
Let us do it. To public life there is due a sort of 
com^jliance. Let us conform; but at the same 
time let us remember that to you and your brav- 
ery is due our greatness to-day. ' ' 

The mournful dirge began and the President 
stood upon the steps. Sorrow en masse had 
gathered in the street. The President had 
nothing more to say. He had said enough. He 
had told us all what was needed. We knew that 
McKinley was dead; those who stood there in 
that throng told us that. We knew that our coun- 
try was living. And that is the reason that those 
who followed McKinley to the tomb knew that 
the flag could not be pulled down. We were there 
to bury a tender sentiment; we were there to 
shed the tears of a nation— to weep with a 
devoted wife and mother— but to stand firm with 
a man who himself stood firm with a nation. 

And this book gives the life of that man. 
Never before has it been written. And to it do 
I gladly subscribe my name. 

Opie Read. 



CHAPTER I. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE — MARKED CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MAN — 
A PRODUCT OF THE AGE — BLOOD OF HEROES IN HIS VEINS — 
IN AN AGE OF MATERIALISM HE STANDS AS THE GREAT 
EXPONENT OF THE VIRTUES — HIS FIRST HISTORICAL W^ORK — 
AMBITIOUS TO DO DEEDS RATHER THAN CHRONICLE THEM. 

Restless as the sea his forefathers sailed to 
reach the new world; active as the soil that 
answered to the tickling of their hoes with bursts 
of golden laughter ; fearless as the native chiefs 
who fought European encroachment on their 
domains with a savage valor worthy of the 
ancient Greeks; patient as the mothers who 
reared children in a wilderness where danger 
and death lurked on every hand, and with a soul 
as broadly sympathetic as the missionaries who 
led the way for the pioneer into the new world, 
Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth President 
of the United States, stands to-day the embodi- 
ment of Americanism. He is as much a product 
of the laws underlying all life as is the air we 

33 



34 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

breathe or the country we inhabit; as much the 
result of the combination of harmonious forces 
as the battle-ship Brooklyn or the Constitution 
of the United States. 

Born to ease and luxury, President Roosevelt 
has lived a life of constant toil and struggle; 
heir to a delicate body his indomitable will has 
transformed it to a sinew^^ frame, wherein his 
active mind, bent on the conquest of evil, is sup- 
plied with an unfailing host ready at all times to 
fight for his ideals. 

"What these ideals are he has made plainly 
apparent. The one trait of his character that 
stands out preeminent above all others is abso- 
lute frankness. In all his public life he has made 
no secret of his plans for the general good. Sin- 
cerity is the keynote of his nature. Having sat- 
isfied himself as to the truth of any matter he 
immediately takes the whole country into his 
confidence, relying on the good sense of the peo- 
ple for support in his battle for its establishment. 
As his life's motto he seems to have taken that 
comprehensive ritual of a brave man's creed 
enunciated by Shakespeare: ''Beware of en- 
trance to a quarrel ; but, being in, bear 't that the 
opposer may beware of thee. ' ' He must be sure 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 35 

of his ground before lie esi^ouses any cause, but 
once lie lias made the decision there is no thought 
of surrender. He is as great in defeat as in vic- 
tory, because he fights for the truth in all its 
nakedness, and, while he may not succeed in his 
undertaking, the principle for which he battles 
remains impregnable. 

Among all the famous characters that make 
American history a continuous story of romance 
and adventure, none can compare with Theodore 
Roosevelt in purposeful action. From the 
day he first entered Harvard College to the day 
he stood up in Buffalo and, with eyes dim from 
grief, declared his intention of carrying out the 
policy of his murdered chief, he seems never to 
have rested. In college he was not only a dili- 
gent student, but the leader in all manly sports 
and pastimes. He wrestled and boxed, ran races 
and played football with the same tense earnest- 
ness that he gave to his studies. He could never 
bear to remain in second place in any adventure, 
and had his full share in the gay rout that keeps 
alive the humanity of young men getting the 
foundations of an education. 

No sooner was he out of college than he 
plunged into active work. The son of wealthy 



36 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

parents, lie might liave lived a life of idle lux- 
ury, letting his less fortunate fellows get on as 
best they could. The path was well beaten before 
him. Four generations of economy and thrift 
had placed him and all those with whom he was 
on intimate terms, beyond the need of toil, and 
the rosy gate of pleasure stood open before him. 
But the ways of the drawling and effeminate 
imitators of foreign degeneracy were as impos- 
sible to him as the ways of a trained ape would 
be to a royal Bengal tiger. He was the owner of 
a spirit that would not let him rest. His whole 
being demanded action, and his reason would be 
satisfied with nothing less than action to some 
good end. He plunged into literature and in less 
than two years completed a most incisive work, 
the ''History of the American Navy in the War 
of 1812." This work was published before he 
was twenty-four years old, but young as the 
author was it bears the stamp of a finished his- 
torical investigator. For the period which it 
covers it is looked upon in the Navy as the final 
word, and a copy is kept in every ship 's library. 
But to be simply a chronicler of noble 
thoughts and heroic deeds could not satisfy a 
man of Theodore Roosevelt's fiber. He had 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 37 

already gained a broad and firm grasp on the 
main threads of American history, and the ambi- 
tion to be an actor in the growth and develop- 
ment of this great nation, even as his fathers had 
been before him, took possession of him, and he 
at once became active in the affairs of his State. 
Mr. Roosevelt early developed a liking for 
politics. He had descended from a long line of 
merchants, but his paternal ancestors for four 
generations had always taken an active interest 
in public affairs, and had served their city and 
State as aldermen, assemblymen and Congress- 
men. But in Theodore Roosevelt all the ambi- 
tions of his race seem to have crystallized in the 
one thought of country. In his philosophy, to 
be a free man under a free government is the 
nearest approach to earthly happiness. He 
became a hunter of wild beasts almost as soon 
as he was able to sight a rifle, and took as much 
pride in the trophies of the chase as any old 
viking would have done. The floors of his house 
at Oyster Bay are strewn with the skins of bears 
and mountain lions, as well as many of those of 
smaller though not less ferocious animals, slain 
by him in their native fastnesses. Horns of stag 
and moose decorate the halls, and sea-turtles are 



38 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

the playthings of liis cliildren. He delights in 
overcoming things worth while, just to emphasize 
the supremacy of man's genius. The same domi- 
nant spirit that sends him alone through the 
forest on the trail of a panther spurs him into the 
thick of the fight during a political campaign, 
and keeps him there until the reforms he prom- 
ised from the rostrum are achieved in legislative 
halls or he is altogether overthrown. 

In his treatment of political questions Mr. 
Roosevelt 's methods exhibit much of the shrewd- 
ness of his merchant ancestors. He believes in 
honest goods, but not in mixing his silks and 
satins with the cheap prints in the show-window. 
He believes in woolen as an every-day costume. 
He can see no hope in the reform that has not a 
practical basis. In his essay on ' 'Americanism ' ' 
he says: ''There are jDhilosophers who assure 
us that in the future patriotism will be regarded 
not as a virtue at all, but merely as a mental 
stage in the journey toward a state of feeling 
when our patriotism will include the whole 
human race and all the world. This may be so ; 
but the age of which these philosophers speak is 
still several aeons distant. In fact, philosophers 
of this type are so very far advanced that they 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 



39 



are of no practical service to the present genera- 
tion. It may be tliat in ages so remote that we 
cannot now understand any of the feelings of 
those who will dwell in them, patriotism will no 
longer be regarded as a virtue, exactly as it may 
be that in those remote ages people will look 
down upon and disregard monogamic marriage ; 
but as things now are and have been for two or 
three thousand years past, and are likely to be 
for two or three thousand years to come, the 
words 'home' and 'country' mean a great deal. 
Nor do they show any tendency to lose their 
significance. At present treason, like adultery, 
ranks as one of the worst of all possible crimes." 
This utterance gives an insight into one dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of Mr. Roosevelt. He 
states his position with absolute franlmess. The 
dream of a millennium is nothing to him unless 
you can prove that it is practical and can be 
brought about at once. ''Let us get hold of 
things as they are," is his motto, "and when we 
have them straightened out we will try some- 
thing else. Let us stick close to the thought that 
we are Americans, first, last and all the time. 
We may not be so polished as our neighbors 
across seas, but we have certainly as good timber 



A TYPICAL AMEBIC AN. 41 

often been worsted in battles for his ideals. But 
whether he wins or loses, he fights on. It has 
mattered not to him whether the foe was the 
fierce cougar of the Eockies, the fetish-maddened 
Indians of the Bad Lands, the corrupt officials of 
a municipality or commonwealth, or the Spanish 
oppressors of Cuba ; once he was arrayed against 
them there was no talk of quarter. Fortunately 
for him he has generally been on the winning 
side. In his physical encounters this has been 
almost invariably the case. On the trail, in the 
forest, and in camp and field his adherents have 
always proved faithful. Although an aristocrat 
by birth and education, he has the true spirit of 
camaraderie, and generally makes firm friends of 
his associates in chivalric adventure. But poli- 
ticians are of different metal. In a political cam- 
paign there is always the personal equation to be 
considered, and the ''Fighting Teddy" of the 
frontier who could always depend upon his body 
of rough plainsmen or daring mountaineers to 
stand by him to the death, has more than once 
been forced to ''drink his bitter beer alone" at 
the end of an unsuccessful attack upon the organ- 
ized forces of the spoils system in his native 
citv and State. 



42 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

But this sturdy, laughing, playing, working, 
fighting descendant of the first Americans has 
never recognized defeat. If he has suffered 
from reverses, the world has never known of it. 
Always upright, forceful, aggressive, he has 
never changed front once in his remarkable 
career, which has been meteoric. He had not 
been one year out of college before he was a 
member of the general assembly of New York 
State. During his two years' term he fought 
every attempt of his colleagues to wrong the 
people in any way. At first they laughed at him. 
What did this student, fresh from the walls of 
a university, know of politics ; he would soon be 
glad to lay aside his ideas of purity in govern- 
ment and adopt a less arduous way to the favor 
of the people. But he disappointed them, and 
his opposition was so constant and hearty that 
they were at last obliged to yield to him in many 
things. During his term he secured the passage 
of the civil service law in New York, a measure 
that has been the sword and shield of all those 
who since have been engaged in the work of 
purifying the politics of the State. 

Following his retirement from the assembly 
he became chairman of the New York delegation 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 43 

to the Republican National Convention. In 
national politics he was as uncompromising as he 
had been in the State. He demanded that every- 
thing should be open and above board. He 
believed in strict adherence to party, but he 
believed the party should be worthy of that 
fealty. He wrote articles for the magazines, 
made speeches before clubs and societies in all 
parts of the city, became a ranchman in the Bad 
Lands, ran for Mayor of New York city, was for 
six years Civil Service Commissioner under 
President Harrison and President of the Police 
Board of New York city from 1895 to 1897. 
Upon the election of McKinley he was appointed 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy and carried his 
activities into the duties of the office in such a 
way as to attract the attention of the House and 
Senate. 

Then came the sinking of the Maine in the 
harbor of Havana, and there broke upon Wash- 
ington a wave of demand for war that was irre- 
sistible. The fiery spirit of Roosevelt led him 
at once to resign his office and seek active duty in 
the field. Wisely selecting for his assistant an 
old friend, Dr. Wood, who was a military man, 
he proposed the formation of that unique regi- 



44 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

ment of cavalry which has since become famous 
as the "Rough Eiders," and at Las Guasimas 
and San Juan hill won for himself and his fol- 
lowers an enviable place in history. His military 
career was marked by the same dash, the same 
energy, the same demand for justice, the same 
comradeship that have distinguished him from 
childhood. He ate and slept with his men, and 
when the Government failed to furnish supplies 
at Santiago he had money cabled him and fed 
his half-starved regiment of American Gascons 
at his own expense. 

He came back from Cuba to meet with an 
ovation in New York and was almost immediately 
elected Governor of that State. His acts in this 
office will be recorded elsewhere in this volume. 
His nomination and election to the Vice-Presi- 
dency and his unlooked-for and tragic elevation 
to the Presidency followed swiftly. Amid the 
tears of grief for his predecessor he quietly took 
the oath of office and on September 14 he became 
President of the United States. 

This in brief is the record of the man Roose- 
velt. He is now something more. In his person 
is embodied the will of the whole people. He is 
no longer a partisan fighting for the tenets of 



A TYPICAL AMERICAN. 45 

party ; lie is no longer a citizen representing only 
himself in the body politic. He is the head and 
front of all citizenship, the repository of the 
hopes and fears and aspirations of eighty mil- 
lions of people, the first citizen of the United 
States of America. 



CHAPTER II. 

BIKTH, LINEAGE AND BOYHOOD. 

DESCENDED FROM GOOD OLD HOLLAND STOCK, HIS ANCESTORS 
AMONG THE EARLIEST AMERICAN PIONEERS — DELICATE IN 
HEALTH, HIS MASTERFUL SPIRIT WINS FOR HIM A STALWART 
FRAME— EARLY DEVELOPS THE QUALITIES OF A LEADER. 

Over east of Broadway, east of Fourth ave- 
nue, and extending from Tenth as far north as 
Twenty-third street, was formerly the aristo- 
cratic portion of Xew York city. Men of fortune 
lived there, and built for themselves homes of a 
certain old-fashioned and substantial style which 
is a comfort to look upon even yet. In that quar- 
ter little of the change that the rest of the city 
knows has intruded. The fashionable families, 
and those of the rich, have moved farther up 
town ; but the good old houses remain, and they 
are still tenanted, for the most part, with a pop- 
ulation as respectable, if less modest, than the 
original inhabitants of the quarter. 

It was tiie region which old Peter Stuy- 
vesant *s descendants chose for their homes ; and 

46 



BIETH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 47 

tlieir church and their j)ark still remain unmo- 
lested by the modern tyranny of change. 

In that substantial and presentable part of 
the city Theodore Koosevelt was born. His 
father's home was No. 28 East Twentieth street, 
a mansion inherited from an earlier generation. 
There the lad sj^ent his boyhood, and there was 
his little world till the larger activities of adult 
life gave a broader field for his powers. 

So far as racial origin is concerned, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt is one-quarter of pure Holland 
blood. The Scotch, Irish and French Huguenot 
strains, with fully three hundred years of Amer- 
ican residence, complete the heritage that birth 
has bestowed upon him. 

His far ancestor, Nicholas Roosevelt, a great- 
great-great-great-grandfather, was an alderman 
of the city in the years 1700 and 1701. The son 
of that founder of the house in America was 
John Roosevelt, a merchant ; and he served as a 
member of the city government through the long 
years from 1748 to 1767, when the city had 
ceased to be New Amsterdam, and was become 
an English provincial city, named in honor of 
the Duke of York. He was prosperous, and laid 
the foundation of those fortunes which have 



48 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

never been dissipated, tliougli they have never 
risen to the magnitude offensive in American 
eyes. The wealth and opportunity seem always 
to have been used with moderation, and a sense 
of fellowshii3 with those allied members of the 
community from which it was drawn. 

Cornelius C. Eoosevelt, son of John, was also 
a merchant, and was honored by election to the 
city legislature from that district which had 
always been regarded as the domain of the nota- 
bles. He succeeded to office in the troubled times 
following the Revolution, and bore his full share 
in restoring the shattered fortunes of the city. 
He served as an alderman in those days when 
good government was the ruling motive; and 
he occupied the office from 1785 to 1801. A 
rather curious incident in the life of the family 
was that father and son occupied chairs in the 
selfsame chamber for two years; for James 
Eoosevelt, also a merchant, and the grandfather 
of Theodore, had established a home just across 
the ward line, and became a member of the coun- 
cil in 1797. He held that place for two years, 
and was again elected in 1809. 

The family had advanced in importance in 
those years, for James J. Roosevelt, son of the 



BIRTH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 



49 



former, was an alderman in 1828-29-30, and was 
sent to the State Legislature in 1835, where he 
remained until the campaign year of General 
William Henry Harrison— 1840. And after 
that he was elected to Congress from the district 
which had known him and his fathers for four 
generations. 

His son was Theodore Roosevelt, one of the 
foremost citizens of New York. He was lawyer, 
judge and philanthropist, a man of strong char- 
acter and sunny disposition, with a very sensible 
plan for the bringing up of boys and girls. He 
insisted on plenty of outdoor air, plenty of exer- 
cise, and such sports as developed them phys- 
ically. He was a most patriotic man in the 
Civil "War period, and in later years established 
the many newsboys' homes which have been so 
helpful to a class that needed judicious assist- 
ance. 

This was the father of President Roosevelt ; 
and he was wise enough to send his children 
to the public schools, where they learned the 
lesson of mingling with their kind, and of 
taking the place to which comparative abilities 
entitled them. There were four children— two 
being boys. Elliott Roosevelt, the brother of 



50 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

Theodore, was the stronger and more vigorous 
of the two. In the early years he was in large 
measure the guardian and champion of his 
brother; for though the latter was aggressive 
enough, he lacked the robust qualities which are 
so much needed in that democracy of youth, the 
playground. 

As the children grew older they were given 
educational advantages beyond the scope of for- 
mer teaching, and learned in private institutions 
—among other things, somewhat of the responsi- 
bility that comes with position and wealth. It was 
by no means a supercilious arrogance that was 
ingrafted on the life of the lads. The old Dutch 
stock had advanced to a premium, even before 
the Civil War ; but the spirit of this family was 
not so much for exclusiveness and hauteur as for 
sterling quality, and a constant preserving of 
relations with the world. 

They were members of the Dutch Reformed 
church, and all the children were brought up in 
strict conformity with its usages. They attended 
the services, and while the sermons are described 
as very long in those days of Theodore's youth, 
there was altogether too masterful a hand upon 
him and his fellows to permit their escaping. 



BIRTH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 51 

And Mr. Roosevelt lias not yet departed from 
the traditions or tlie church of his fathers. The 
relation begun when he sat in the high-backed 
pews of the old church on the ' ' East Side ' ' con- 
tinues unbroken to the present ; and wherever he 
has an opportunity to attend the services of that 
denomination, he faithfully observes his obliga- 
tion. 

It was a matter of regret to his parents that 
Theodore was of delicate physique. He had the 
sturdy spirit of all the vigorous ancestors who 
had gone before, and with it presented a more 
volatile quality than is usually found in the 
phlegmatic Hollander. It was as if he had 
caught up the strain of his race back in the cen- 
turies when Van Diemen sailed, and when Wil- 
liam of Orange battled and won. But he lacked 
the physical force to support his purposes. 
Throughout boyhood he suffered in comparison 
with his fellows, so far as muscular powers went. 

As Theodore passed from boyhood into youth 
he seemed more and more resolved to overcome 
that handicap of a delicate frame ; and his effort 
turned to developing the strength which he so 
much desired, and which it seemed nature had 
intended to denv him. 



52 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Possibly the courses of liig development were 
aided by nature in that period of his life when 
he advanced toward maturity. In any event, 
he was successful. The sickly youth became 
stronger. He suffered unnumbered defeats, but 
never for once was his resolution chilled or his 
purpose altered. He would be strong. And as he 
attained the age of preparation for college, he 
was fully the physical equal of young men of his 
years. 

In study he was from the first almost a model 
scholar. Walter 'Scott was a dullard at school ; 
and General Grant graduated pretty nearly at 
the foot of a class of forty-four. Neither could 
study ; and it seemed neither could learn. They 
developed great talents later— though in vastly 
different lines ; but this lad, destined for a splen- 
did intellectual activity in his manhood, found 
books to his liking, and progress in his studies 
both easy and delightful. 

One of the events in his boy-life was the 
acquaintance with Edith Carow, a girl of nearly 
his own age, and a companion in school as well as 
in the social intercourse that came with his added 
years. They were great friends, with a charming 
romance that continued from the time they were 



BIETH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 53 

children until lie left his New York home to 
enter upon life at Harvard College. They 
had been together while at school ; and in those 
days which seem so far away now they had taken 
their games to the greensward of Union Park, 
and had played there day after day together. 
Her home, indeed, was in Fourteenth street, and 
but a step from the square. That was a part of 
the fashionable quarter at the time, and the 
myriad business houses had not begun their 
intrusion. 

There was plenty of reason for the intimacy. 
They met at the same children's parties, and 
studied in the same schools— until little Miss 
Edith was packed off to a fashionable boarding 
school presided over by a Miss Comstock, who 
will be remembered by many of the older New 
Yorkers to-day. Edith 's father was a merchant, 
as his father had been before him; and her 
mother was by birth Miss Gertrude Tyler, 
daughter of General Tyler, of Connecticut. Her 
family in all its connections had been rich and 
prominent through many generations. The 
same was true of Theodore, whose father was a 
lawyer and a judge, and had been successively 
an alderman, a member of the assembly at 



54 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

Albany and a congressman at Washington. 
Edith Kermit Carow has said, in the happy, 
established days since her marriage, that she had 
"liked" Teddy Roosevelt in those distant times 
because he could do so much more than she 
could. And yet he was a child of puny strength, 
while she reveled in all the vigor of a healthy 
girlhood. It is probable the strong-willed lad 
impressed her with more power than he pos- 
sessed. He certainly suffered in comparison 
with many other lads of her acquaintance, of his 
age. But it is his brother's testimony that he 
never permitted himself to be thrust out of the 
way, nor his little friend to be imposed upon. 
And his ready championing of her at all times 
may have won him a place in her eyes for which 
he was indebted rather to the promise of his 
spirit than the fulfilment of the flesh. 

Later in life Mr. Eoosevelt found more than 
a childhood friend in the girl companion of his 
leisure hours. He found one who understood 
him, who had faith in him and encouraged him— 
and who came in maturer years, after sorrow 
had visited him, to share his home, to increase 
his fortune, and to make sacred his success. 

When young Theodore Eoosevelt had ad- 



BIKTH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 



55 



vanced to the age of college study, and had gone 
up to Harvard for the final four years of stu- 
dent life, he was singularly well-equipped for 
the labors that awaited him. So far as natural 
preference was concerned, he had taken the 
greatest delight in history, and in civil govern- 
ment. But so thoroughly had he made himself 
master of his tendencies and desires that he 
passed exceedingly well in mathematics -that 
bane of the imaginative scholar. That must have 
meant adherence to a course of self-disciplme ; 
for arithmetic was naturally distasteful to him. 
He loved to revel in books of adventure, and 
knew the story of his own land and those of 
modern western Europe, from repeated readmg. 
But he had resolutely devoted himself to the 
less attractive studies-being aided, no doubt, 
by the rigid methods of his teachers. And the 
mental training so secured must be in large part 
chargeable with the close-knit intellectual fiber 
which his manhood has revealed. It was the 
substantial structure upon which his later fancy 
could build, jnst as his acquired physical strength 
formed a magazine from which his tireless 
energy might draw without fear of exhausting it. 
In the campaign of 1900 it was sometimes 



56 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

said that ' ' Theodore Roosevelt was born with a 
gold spoon in his mouth." But the imputation 
is hardly fair. He was an average boy as to 
mental attainments, and considerably under the 
average in bodily strength. Whatever suc- 
cesses he has achieved seem to have come more 
from an inherent will that would not brook 
defeat in any line rather than from peculiar 
advantages gratuitously bestowed upon him. He 
was rich, it is true, and possessed of many social 
advantages. But these could not have won him 
a place in the fields of physical, mental and polit- 
ical activity which he has chosen. A careful esti- 
mate of his life must lodge much of the credit 
for his equipping in those years of later boyhood 
when his own motive was the impelling force; 
when he would not permit other boys to excel 
him in studies, and when he went systematically 
at such training as would render it impossible 
for them long to excel him in sports. And on 
the basis of these two elements in his boyhood 
has probably been builded the traits and the 
powers which have made him a type of very 
creditable American manhood. Out of these may 
grow, if one have the purpose to achieve it, an 
equal success in any line of endeavor. 



CHAPTER III. 

COLLEGE LIFE. 

ENTERS COLLEGE AT TH« AGE OF EIGHTEEN— DEVELOPS A TASTE 
FOR HUNTING AND NATURAL HISTORY— IS ACTIVE IN ALL COL- 
LEGE SPORTS, ESPECIALLY WRESTLING AND BOXING — GRADU- 
ATES IN 1880 WITH HIGH HONORS — MEMBERSHIP IN CLUBS, 
ETC. 

Slender of figure and pale of face, Theodore 
Roosevelt entered Harvard in the fall of the 
Centennial year, a youth of eighteen. He had 
been reared in a home of refinement and com- 
fortable wealth in the city of New York. He 
was well aware of his position in society and of 
what would be expected of him at home when 
his graduation day had arrived. He had been 
drilled by his parents in the knowledge of self- 
dependence and already had a mind leaning to 
investigation and discovery. 

At the university, Mr. Roosevelt was a unique 
figure. Sterling, rugged, old-fashioned honesty 
and a keen sense of duty brought him up sharply 
before every proposition, and he made it the 



58 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

})aramouut business of the present to find out just 
what was implied in that proposition. If it 
squared with his ideas of right he adopted it ; if 
not, it was rejected until he had been convinced 
that it contained more of virtue than of evil. His 
career in those student days differed very little 
from the swift and fearless march he has since 
made to the mountain peak of Americanism. He 
was not so strong of body then as he has since 
grown to be, but he did not hesitate to join in any 
reputable sport or serious task attempted by his 
fellows. In one of his later essays Mr. Eoosevelt 
says : * ' One plain duty of every man is to face 
the future as he faces the present, regardless of 
what it may have in store for him, and turning 
toward the light as he sees the light, to play his 
part manfully, as a man among men. ' ' A similar 
spirit seems to have animated him in all his 
actions, even before he had announced his inten- 
tion of embarking in a public career. He liter- 
ally fought his way through college as he has 
since fought his way through life, accepting 
nothing from any source that did not seem to him 
to be fair and founded in truth. 

Mr. Eoosevelt took with him to Cambridge a 
habit of hard work and a disdain for idleness. 



COLLEGE LIFE. 59 

Had he not been well equipped with these attri- 
butes his career must have been one of far less 
moment to his generation, for he was neither a 
ready student nor a rugged athlete. It is not 
known that he at this time set a high mark for 
himself as a historian, a scientist, a politician, a 
warrior, or a statesman, in all of which fields he 
has since reached distinction. If we may believe 
his own words he was not so much given to 
dreams of achievement as the average healthy 
youth, who has far less chances to inspire his 
imagination. When Julian Ralph once asked 
him, '^What did you expect to be or dream of 
being when you were a boy?" Mr. Roosevelt 
answered : 

"I do not recollect that I dreamed at all or 
planned at all. I simply obeyed the injunction, 
'Whatever thy hand fiudeth to do, do that with 
all thy might, ' and so I took up what came along 
as it came. Since then I have gone on Lincoln's 
motto, 'Do the best; if not, then the best possi- 
ble.' " 

There seems to be no question as to the appli- 
cation of these precepts to his own conduct by 
Mr. Roosevelt while he was in college. He 
entered upon his studies with the same earnest- 



60 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

ness and enthusiasm that he has since shown in 
all his undertakings, and supplemented them by 
hearty cooperation in all college sports. He 
says of himself previous to his arrival in Cam- 
bridge : ' ' I was a slender, sickly boy. I had made 
my health what it was. I determined to be strong 
and well, and did everything to make myself so. ' ' 
Of his college days we have this explicit declara- 
tion : ' ' By the time I entered Harvard I was able 
to take my part in whatever sports I liked. I 
wrestled and sparred and ran a great deal dur- 
ing my four years in Cam.bridge, and though I 
never came out first I got more good out of the 
exercise than those who did, because I immensely 
enjoyed it and never injured myself. I was very 
fond of wrestling and boxing. I think I was a 
good deal of a wrestler, and though I never won 
a championship, yet more than once I won my 
trial heats and got into the final round. ' ' 

Mr. Roosevelt is the first graduate of Harvard 
to become President of the United States since 
the election of John Quincy Adams to that office 
in 1824. But his experiences have been so varied 
and his occupations so general and democratic 
that he will be claimed as often by the plainsman, 
the farmer, the soldier, the sailor or the author, 



COLLEGE LIFE. 61 

as by the members of his college society. He 
began to live in a democratic way on his first 
day at college, and during the entire four years 
of his course he occupied rooms in a private 
house, then No. 16, now No. 88 Winthrop street. 
It stands at the southwest corner of Winthrop 
and Holyoke streets, two blocks toward the river 
from Massachusetts avenue, on the extreme edge 
of the college community, and within a stone's 
throw of the Charles. The house was then kept 
by Mrs. Richardson, who afterward moved to 
Somerville; she rented the four rooms of the 
second floor to two students. 

Mr. Eoosevelt had the two rooms at the south- 
east corner of the house, the front room, a very 
large study, and the rear one, a very small bed- 
room. Compared to the rooms in use by students 
at Harvard now, since the building of the large 
private dormitories, Mr. Roosevelt's quarters 
were modest indeed. 

When Mr. Roosevelt entered college he had 
already developed a taste for hunting and for 
natural history, which has since led him so often 
and so far through field and forest and made 
him an authority on the character and habits of 
the big game of America. His rifle and hunting- 



62 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

kit, the skins and trophies of the chase, were the 
most conspicuous things in his room. His birds 
he mounted himself. Live turtles and insects 
were alwaj^s to be found in his study, and one 
who lived in the house with him at the time 
recalls the excitement occasioned by a partic- 
ularly large turtle, sent him by a friend from 
the Southern seas, which escaped out of its box 
one night and started toward the bath-room in 
search of water. 

In the memory of his classmates Mr. Roosevelt 
holds a warm place, notwithstanding his pro- 
nounced opinions and fearless habit of expres- 
sion. As one of them has expressed it, he was 
'^ peculiarly earnest and mature in the way he 
took hold of things." Both his fellows and his 
teachers say he was much above the average as a 
student. Yet he was not easily led, even then, but 
was as original and as reliant on his own judg- 
ment as at present. In a mere matter of opinion 
or dogma he was always ready to cross swords 
with his instructors, and several of his contempo- 
raries in college recall with smiles some very 
strenuous discussions with teachers in which he 
was involved by his habit of defending his own 
convictions. At graduation he was one of the few 



COLLEGE LIFE. 63 

of liis class who took honors, his subject being 
natural history. 

Mr. Roosevelt seems at this time to have fol- 
lowed that all-round activity, and to have attained 
that high excellence in each field which is the 
ideal of college experience. He was well toward 
the top as a student, but he was far too human 
not to have a full share in the social and political 
life of the institution. In his sophomore year 
he was one of the forty men in his class who 
belonged to the Institute of 1870. In his senior 
year he was a member of the Porcelain Club, the 
Alpha Delta Phi, and the Hasty Pudding Clubs. 
Of the last nam^ed he was secretary. 

His membership in the clubs of a less social 
nature shows what kind of a college man he was. 
In rowing, baseball and football he was an ear- 
nest champion, although seldom an active par- 
ticipant. In other athletic contests he was a 
familiar figure. It was while at Harvard that 
he became proficient in boxing, an art that stood 
him in good stead at an important stage of 
his career as an assemblyman, when the argu- 
ment of brute force was invoked to suppress him. 
Boxing was a regular feature of the Harvard 
Athletic Association contests, and ''Teddy," as 



64 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

he was universally called, was the winner of 
many a lively bout. He has never been a believer 
in a negative policy, and some of his happiest 
epigrams have sprung from his knowledge of the 
art of self-defense. 

During his college days Mr. Roosevelt kept 
a horse and cart, the latter one of the extremely 
high ones that were in vogue at that time, and 
which to-day may be frequently seen on the boul- 
evards of American cities. In this he drove 
almost every afternoon. His love for the saddle 
was developed later, when he adopted the life of 
a cowboy. He was a familiar figure in the society 
of Boston, where his dashing and picturesque 
ways made him a welcome guest. There is a 
photograph extant, taken at this time, which 
shows him with a rather becoming set of whis- 
kers. It was taken at graduation and is highly 
prized by his classmates. The picture shows a 
young man of mature thought and sober judg- 
ment. 

Mr. Roosevelt had his share in college jour- 
nalism. During his senior year he was one of 
the editors of the Advocate. Albert Bushnell 
Hart, professor of American history in the col- 
lege, was editor-in-chief. It is not plain just 



COLLEGE LIFE. 65 

what work Mr. Roosevelt did on the Advocate. 
The future author of '^"Winning of the West" 
seems to have contented himself with purely edi- 
toi'ial duties or to have thought too little of his 
writings to claim them, for the files of the paper 
reveal but one article signed by him, and this 
bears only the initial ' ' R. " However, this arti- 
cle is identified by his associates on the publica- 
tion. It is entitled ' ' Football in Colleges, ' ' and is 
merely a resume of conditions of the game at 
Yale and Princeton. It has little of the nervous 
force and picturesque style of his later wi'itings. 
The one Roosevelt touch is in the closing para- 
graph, which reads : ' ' What is most necessary is 
that every man should realize the necessity of 
faithful and honest work, every afternoon. ' ' The 
last two words are in italics. The utterance is 
characteristic of the man, and valuable in that it 
points thus early to his driving qualities. 

An incident recalled by his classmates is 
equally characteristic of Mr. Roosevelt and shows 
that he did things much the same way then that 
he does them now. A horse in a stable close 
by Mr. Roosevelt's room made a sudden noise 
one night, which demanded instant attention. 
Mr. Roosevelt had retired, but without stopping 



66 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

to change his apparel he sj^rang out of the 
window, two stories from the ground, and had 
quieted the trouble before the less impetuous 
neighbors had arrived. 

While in college Mr. Roosevelt held member- 
ship in the following clubs : The Natural History 
Society; the Art Club, of which Charles Elliot 
Norton was president; the Finance Club; the 
Glee Club (associate member) ; the Harvard 
Rifle Corps ; the 0. K. Society, of which he was 
treasurer, and the Harvard Athletic Association, 
of which he was steward. 

Mr. Roosevelt 's outdoor life, his hunting and 
fishing trips, and the study and cataloguing of 
the birds and insects of his neighborhood had 
aroused in him a love of natural history long 
before he entered college. Most of his summers 
were spent at the Roosevelt farm near Oyster 
Bay, then almost as inaccessible from New York 
as the Adirondacks now are, and there was 
plenty of opportunity for long tramps through 
the woods and fields in search of information. 
His perseverance as a boy was phenomenal. 
Once his curiosity was aroused concerning any 
living organism he allowed himself no rest until 
he had the whole scheme of its development down 



COLLEGE LIFE. 67 

from tlie original protoplasm. He continued 
these studies all through his college career and 
at graduation had a mind well stored with the 
facts of natural history. In this way he laid the 
foundation for the investigations that have since 
given to his descriptions of hunting a peculiar 
scientific value not owned by those of any other 
writer. He loved the country from boyhood, and 
to-day credits his physical endurance to his early 
outdoor life. ' ' I belong as much to the country 
as to the city," he often says; "I owe all my 
vigor to the country. ' ' 

Mr. Roosevelt's reading and research had 
been of such a nature as to develop his admira- 
tion for heroic deeds, and in college he became a 
close student of history, being specially attracted 
to the science of government and the stirring 
tales that accompanied the accounts of the differ- 
ent conquests and the formation of new powers. 
He never tired of reading the ''Federalist," 
which he calls ' ' the greatest book of its kind ever 
written." Mr. Ray Standard Baker, in "A 
Character Sketch of Mr. Roosevelt," published 
in McClure's for November, 1898, says of him: 
' ' No young American of the time was more thor- 
oughly familiar with the history of his country, 



68 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

both east and west, and with the lives of its 
greatest men. He had studied its politics as well 
as its wars, and he knew every one of the noble 
principles on which it was founded." 

It was while in college that Mr. Roosevelt 
conceived the idea of his attractive and useful 
history of the ''Naval War of 1812," and he 
began writing it almost as soon as he was out 
of Harvard. 

The causes that have resulted in Mr. Roose- 
velt 's being given the title of " A Typical Amer- 
ican ' ' can be easily traced in the development of 
his character during this formative period of his 
college life. ' ' Each of us, ' ' he says, ' ' who reads 
the Gettysburg speech, or the second inaugural 
address of the greatest American of the nine- 
teenth century, or who studies the long cam- 
paigns and lofty statesmanship of that other 
American who was even greater, cannot but feel 
within him that lift toward things higher and 
nobler, which can never be bestowed by the 
enjoyment of material prosperity." 

Here was an aristocrat born and bred, a 
young man in the full enjoyment of riches, who 
at the very outset of his career not only chose 
for his model the deeds of the two greatest 



COLLEGE LIFE. 69 

Americans, but at once declared his belief in a 
spiritual ratlier than a material government. 
Neither was he satisfied in merely expressing his 
belief in these models, but he set to work to con- 
form to them as far as circumstances and the 
changed conditions of the times would permit. 
He felt no sentimental timidity in declaring his 
faith in these ideals, but, on the contrary, he 
proclaimed that faith in his earliest public utter- 
ances, and has kei)t it with surprising tenacity 
through a stormy and perilous voyage on the sea 
of politics. 

Mr. Roosevelt graduated from the university 
in 1880, a Phi Beta Kaj^pa man, and he after- 
ward spent some time studying in Dresden. He 
was now in his twenty-third year, a robust, 
broad-shouldered, square-jawed young man, a 
born fighter anxious for the conflict of life. He 
had no need to work; his income was ample to 
keep him in comfort, even luxury, all his life. 
He might have spent his summers at Newport 
and his winters on the continent, seeking in pop- 
ular diversions those pleasures which come 
almost unsought to the favorites of fortune. He 
might have won fame as an amateur athlete, and 
he had the wit, tact and presence to be one of the 



70 THEODOEE KOOSEVELT. 

lions of society at home and abroad. Had he 
followed this course no one would have thought 
of blaming him. Whatever he gave to the world 
would have been accepted with the world 's usual 
good nature, and there would have been no fur- 
ther demands ujDon his talent or his fortune than 
he was pleased to bestow. 

To most young men in Mr. Roosevelt's situa- 
tion, a life of ease and pleasure would have 
seemed the only one at all consistent with his 
inherited wealth and mental endowments. But a 
life of ease and indolence offered no attractions 
to the future Rough Rider. He craved the stir 
and action of conflict. His country was at peace 
and America was the only land in which this 
young patriot would look for inspiration in 
action. He tried the excitements of foreign 
travel and scaled the Jungfrau and the Matter- 
horn, wanning for his feats a membership in the 
Alpine Club of London. But these were empty 
honors, brave deeds enough in themselves, but 
uarren of results. He returned to New York 
and attempted the study of law with his uncle, 
Robert B. Roosevelt. He worked at his naval 
history. He hunted the biggest game he could 
find, and followed their trails alone or with a 



COLLEGE LIFE. 71 

single man to assist him in the duties of the camp. 
Then, in 1881, he attended his first primary— a 
primary of the Republican party— and discov- 
ered his life-work. To most young men of his 
education and breeding, fresh from their books, 
and acquainted with the greatest achievements 
of their countrymen, such a gathering as comes 
together in a political primary would have 
seemed unimportant, if not mean and sordid; 
but Mr. Eoosevelt saw in that mixed company of 
men the foundation of free government. If it 
was selfish and subject to improper rule those 
were faults to be corrected. Here was an oppor- 
tunity for good fighting to some end, and it 
strongly attracted him. 

From this time on Mr. Eoosevelt never lost 
his interest in practical politics. He went into it 
with the earnest intention of being useful to his 
fellows by doing what he could to correct the 
evils that had grown up in the Government, and 
the record of his deeds since that eventful night 
is an earnest of the vigorous campaign he has 
made along those lines. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A NEW YOKK ASSEMBLYMAN. 

AT ONCE ATTRACTS ATTENTION TO HIMSELF AS AN UNCOMPRO- 
MISING FOE TO MACHINE RULE, AND A FRIEND OF GOOD GOVERN- 
MENT—STRIKING PROMISE OF A REMARKABLE PUBLIC CAREER 
— NOT EVEN THE DANGER OF BODILY VIOLENCE COULD DETER 
HIM— A REVELATION TO THE ROWDIES. 

Mr. Roosevelt had scarcely returned home 
when his friends asked him to become their can- 
didate for election to a seat in the legislature 
from the Twenty-first Assembly district of the 
State. It was not wholly distasteful to him in 
prospect, for the Roosevelts had been identified 
with public affairs for nearly two centuries ; and, 
besides, he hungered for the activity which polit- 
ical life was likely to bring. 

But there was a motive still stronger than 
this, and one that seems to have moved him gen- 
erally in his actions through life. In the career 
which this promised service in the legislature 
could open to him, he saw the opportunity^ to do 
some good for his fellows. He was a wide-awake 

72 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 73 

man, a man of the world— so far as his years 
went, and uncommonly well-informed on practi- 
cal affairs. He knew that really disinterested 
government was not wholly the object of the law- 
making powers. He knew there was corruption 
in the halls of the assembly at Albany, and that 
even the public conscience of his own city— the 
aristocratic portions as well as those less preten- 
tious—was not of the sterling quality that it 
should be. He knew there was much shameless 
corruption in the tenement districts ; but he was 
one of the first to use that scalding term, 'Hhe 
wealthy criminal classes. ' ' 

He had a theory that, however great the diffi- 
culties encountered, up there at Albany or any- 
where else, the man who met them with honesty, 
resolution and common sense would be pretty 
likely to conquer. And he loved to conquer— 
if only the opposition to be overcome were suffi- 
ciently strong. 

The interesting thing about the whole propo- 
sition was that his fight began at the very outset 
of his political career. He was of that Murray 
Hill district which was then the name for all 
exclusiveness and propriety. But the district 
had long been the political possession of a ring 



74 THEODOKE KOOSEVELT. 

in his own party which did not permit inde- 
pendence of action any more than did the less 
decorous rulers of the Bowery. No Democrat 
had the ghost of a chance for election from Mur- 
ray Hill ; but, similarly, no Republican had ever 
gone from there to the legislature at Albany 
with independence enough and character enough 
to leave his name in the memory of a single citi- 
zen. And it was understood very well by the 
gentlemen who had so skilfully manipulated the 
primaries and the polls that this man Roosevelt 
was not the person they wanted in the legislature. 
They did not like his square jaw. They remem- 
bered or heard of the Roosevelts of the past, and 
knew it was not a pleasant name to conjure 
against. They particularly deprecated his habit 
of thinking for himself instead of coming to 
ward headquarters every morning and asking 
what opinions were to be entertained for the day. 

So the ' ' managers ' ' were against him. 

That is why his conflict in politics began 
with the beginning of his political life. 

The first thing he did was to effect the over- 
throw of that corrupt coterie of politicians who 
had been sending vapid and inefficient men to 
the assembly from the Murray Hill district. 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 75 

These had been in no sense representative of that 
excellent electorate; but they had been exceed- 
ingly convenient for the men who sent them to 
Albany. Mr. Roosevelt went at the matter with 
the directness that was part of his nature. The 
laws gave him the right to rally his friends and 
supporters at the primaries ; and before the old 
managers were aware of their peril they had 
exercised that commonly unused privilege of 
American citizenshiji, and had expressed their 
will in the selection of a candidate. Mr. Roose- 
velt was nominated. 

Then he was elected. That was by no means 
difficult. And the men who had been managing 
affairs political in Murray Hill found a stronger 
man at the helm. Their occupation was gone. 
As they had opposed him, of course it was hope- 
less to command him. It was equally useless to 
try to bully him. That was discovered at the 
very outset. And, these things being true, it was 
beyond probability that they could buy him. So 
that, in a period of great corruption, a pure man 
and a strong man took his seat in the legislature. 

There was an added motive for commendable 
action at the time. It has been stated that in his 
boyhood he was the playmate of Edith Carow, 



76 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

and that they grew up with the avowed purpose 
of uniting their fortunes when they should come 
to maturity— when they should have passed 
school days, and the world should be their own. 

But while a student at Harvard he had met 
Miss Alice Lee, of Boston; and an attachment 
sprang up between them which ripened into that 
profound regard in which the lives of a man and 
a woman are bound in a perfect union. And in tlie 
recess following his first term in the legislature, 
Mr. Roosevelt and Miss Lee were married. It was 
a most happy union, and the following year a 
daughter was born to them. But in 1883, while 
serving his third— and last— term in the legisla- 
ture, Mrs. Roosevelt died ; and it seemed to her 
bereaved husband that one of his main incentives 
to a strenuous life had been taken from him. His 
mother 's death in the following year cast another 
pall upon his spirit, and the conflicts of men 
appeared for the first time valueless. 

He remained a member of the assembly for 
three terms. In that time he sat with bankers 
and bricklayers, with merchants and mechanics, 
with lawyers, fanners, day-laborers, saloon- 
keepers and prize-fighters. Every interest in the 
great State was represented— even those of the 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 77 

criminal. And the "honorable" servants of this 
last class were by no means modest or abashed, 
or at all solicitous to be recognized as anything 
other than what they were. Mr. Roosevelt has 
himself called attention to the fact that the one 
hundred and twenty-eight members of the assem- 
bly and the thirty-two men in the senate com- 
posed a little parliament which controlled the 
public affairs of a commonwealth more populous 
than any one of two-thirds of the kingdoms of 
Europe, and one which, in point of wealth, mate- 
rial prosperity, variety of interests, extent of 
territory and capacity for expansion, could fairly 
rank next to the powers of the first class. 

Though it was not at all the result for which 
he had started when he went to Albany, he found 
beyond a doubt that corruption existed there. 
It did not surprise him, nor shock him to the 
point of inability to proceed with his mission; 
and he wasted no time trying to correct that 
evil— in the sense of seeking exposure and pun- 
ishment for the culprits. He did a better work in 
proceeding openly and honestly for the accom- 
plishment of the measures which seemed to him 
of greatest benefit to the State, and to his 
constituents. But he had not been in the assem- 



78 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

bly a week before he was a marked man. He 
disarranged theories distressingly. Here was a 
man who had no private schemes to further, and 
no selfish principles to which ordinary motives 
could appeal. Demagogues could not safely rush 
their measures through the house, for he was 
likely at any time to rise with a perfectly panic- 
producing question. He could not be met in 
debate, for he was master of direct speech, quick 
in repartee, and perfectly willing to give and take 
in that combat of words which falls into disuse 
when corruption becomes the moving power in 
legislation. As the ''bosses" down in the Mur- 
ray Hill district had discovered, these gentlemen 
in the legislature became convinced that he could 
neither be bought nor bullied. 

But one thing was left, and the very low 
grade of the assembly may be understood when 
it is stated that the men who sought to control the 
lower house, who had controlled it for years, no 
matter which party was in power, hired a thug 
to meet Mr. Eoosevelt, and administer in a beat- 
ing the rebuke which a body of elected American 
legislators had decided he deserved. 

One night in the lobby of the old Delavan 
House the collision occurred. That was a famous 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 79 

hostelry, since burned, where legislators from 
all over the State congregated every evening, 
and where much of the actual business of the 
session was transacted. 

It has always been a peculiarity of Mr, 
Roosevelt's nature that he never "got mad" at 
people, no matter what the provocation. He 
always remembered faces, and all that had 
passed in his association with a man; but he 
never avoided that person, no matter what the 
latter 's conduct may have been. In legislative 
life that is an especially valuable trait. He could 
fight a man all day on the floor, and then meet 
him with a laugh and a jest in the evening. And 
so on this night, after a day when he had been 
a particularly sharp thorn in the side of corrup- 
tion, he moved about the lobby of the old hotel, 
chatting with friends, tossing a laugh and a good- 
natured thrust at those who had opposed him, 
and treating the whole matter from the stand- 
point of one who understands the motives as well 
as the actions of those with whom he is asso- 
ciated. He did not pose. He made no pretense 
of loftier morality than those about him, but let 
them draw their own conclusions from his con- 
duct. 



80 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

At ten o'clock he started to leave the hotel. 
On the way from the upper portion of the lobby, 
where he had been chatting with fellow mem- 
bers, he passed the door leading to the buffet. 
And from that door, as by a preconcerted signal 
from the '^ honorable men" with whom he had 
been associating, came a group of fellows, rather 
noisy, and full of the jostling which follows tar- 
rying at the wine. They were not a pleasant lot. 
One in particular was a pugilist called ' ' Stubby" 
Collins ; and this bully bumped rather forcibly 
against Mr. Roosevelt. The latter was alone, but 
he saw in an instant, with the eye of a man accus- 
tomed to collisions, the fact that this little party 
had waylaid him with a purpose. He paused, 
fully on his guard, and then ' ^ Stubby, ' ' with an 
appearance of the greatest indignation, struck 
at him, demanding angrily: ''AVhat do you 
mean, running into me that way I" 

The blow did not land. The men who hired 
* ' Stubby ' ' had not informed him that this young 
member of the assembly had been one of the very 
best boxers at Harvard, and rather liked a fight. 
They had simply paid the slugger a certain price 
to ''do up" the man who could not take a hint 
in any other way. 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 81 

In an instant Mr. Roosevelt had chosen his 
position. It was beyond the group of revellers, 
and where he could keep both them and the more 
aristocratic party of their employers in view. 
And there, standing quite alone, ''Stubby" made 
his rush. In half a minute the thug was beaten. 
He had met far more than his match; and the 
two or three of his friends who tendered their 
assistance were gathering themselves up from 
the marble floor of the lobby, and wondering if 
there had not been a mistake. 

When it was all over Mr. Roosevelt walked, 
still smiling, down the room, and told the "hon- 
orable" providers of this combat that he under- 
stood perfectly their connection with it, and that 
he was greatly obliged to them. He had not 
enjoyed himself more for a year. 

After that the representative of the Murray 
Hill district was treated with the consideration 
which his varied talents deserved. 

In one of his essays Mr. Roosevelt has taken 
occasion to lay the blame for a corrupt legisla- 
ture where it properly belongs ; and he does it in 
the most graphic manner imaginable. A young 
man had done good and honest work in the legis- 
lature, but had by no means been the pliant tool 



82 THEODOKE KOOSEVELT. 

of the politicians that bad government required, 
and so a combination was made to defeat him. 
Mr. Roosevelt undertook to assist his friend to a 
return, in spite of the opposition. A voter, a 
man of large interests, was inveighing bitterly 
against the tyranny of politicians who should 
conspire for the young man 's overthrow, and Mr. 
Roosevelt said to him : 

' ' Of course you will stay at the polls all day, 
and work for his reelection?" 

''Unfortunately," said the citizen who 
yearned for better government, ''I have an 
engagement to go quail-shooting next Tuesday. ' ' 

The moral Mr. Roosevelt tried to convey was 
that lawmakers and officials generally were 
quite what the public made them; and that, 
above all things, the legislator was representative 
of the people who employed him. 

He had learned the men with whom he served. 
Some he could trust. Some he must fight. And 
he took up his tasks accordingly. He became in 
a month, without the aid of any caucus, the leader 
of the minority— and the best hated man in 
Albany. 

He found a large number of men who were 
good enough in themselves, but who were 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 



83 



''owned" by some interest or some man desiring 
favors at the hands of the legislators. These 
men would act with their party, whichever it 
might be, on what were regarded as unimportant 
matters— that is, matters touching the general 
good of the people. But they were held to a 
strict accountability whenever really vital mat- 
ters were concerned. "Vital matters" were 
those only which touched the pockets of the men 
who owned the assemblymen. Some idea of the 
method employed by Mr. Roosevelt in this phase 
of his activity may be gleaned from a passage in 
his essay on "Phases of State Legislation." 

"On one occasion there came before a com- 
mittee of which I happened to be a member, a 
perfectly proper bill in the interest of a certain 
corporation. The majority of the committee, six 
in number, were thoroughly bad men, who 
opposed the measure in the hope of being paid 
to cease their opposition. When I consented to 
take charge of the bill I had stipulated that not 
one penny should be paid to insure its passage. 
It therefore became necessary to see what pres- 
sure could be brought to bear on the recalcitrant 
members ; and, accordingly, we had to find out 
who were the authors and sponsors of their polit- 



84 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

ical being. Three proved to be under the control 
of local statesmen of the same party as them- 
selves, and of equally bad moral character. One 
was ruled by a politician of unsavory reputation 
from a different city. The fifth, a Democrat, was 
owned by a Eepublican Federal official ; and the 
sixth by the president of a horse-car company. 
A couple of letters from these two magnates 
forced the last members mentioned to change 
front on the bill with surprising alacri tj''. ' ' 

But there was another side to his life in the 
assembly. He met there many men who were 
earnest and honest, and some who were efficient 
in securing the legislation they believed best for 
the public of the State, as well as for their con- 
stituents. Some labored without a thought of 
their future political prospects, or a present 
pecuniary reward. And while he approved them, 
he was forced to declare that they were not very 
well used by their constituents. Yet in the final 
conclusion of the whole matter he says the 
chances of a man's being retained in the public 
service are about ten per cent, better when he is 
honest than when he is dishonest, other things 
being equal. 

There was at times a distinctively humorous 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 85 

view of the life. Men like Roosevelt liked 
the excitcmGnt, and the perpetual conflict. He 
has said in later years: "Wsir and politics— 
those are the two greatest games. ' ' He liked to 
put forth his full powers to reach his ends ; and 
if he was at times saddened or angered by the 
viciousness or the ignorance of his colleagues, 
yet the latter at times unwittingly furnished him 
a good deal of fun. For one thing, there was a 
deadlock in the attempt to organize the legisla- 
ture of 1882. The Democrats were in a majority, 
but a faction fight had rent the party in twain; 
and days were passed without anything being ac- 
complished. Finally, one day the leaders of the 
county faction sent to the leaders of the Tam- 
many faction a proposition plainly headed : ' ' An 
Ultimatum." The word had the appearance of 
Latin. It was unusual. It was regarded with 
suspicion, because it was, in the judgment of the 
men addressed, plainly meant as an insult. And 
they replied next day with a counter proposition 
splendidly answering the base calumniation of 
yesterday by a title as follows : ' ' An Ipse Dixit 
to Your Ultimatum. ' ' 

One day a very fervid orator was speaking 
in favor of a bill supposed to be directed against 



86 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

the contract labor system, and he wound up a 
sufficiently remarkable oration with the still more 
startling assertion that the system was ''a vital 
cobra which was swamping the lives of the work- 
ingmen. ' ' 

Among the less desirable elements in the 
assembly there came to be a sort of contempt for 
all measures not tending to the benefit of some 
private person or special interest. There was a 
code of ethics among the corrupt which invested 
with dignity everything not of a public nature. 
Everything else was spoken of scornfully as "a 
local bill. ' ' Entering the chamber one day while 
a vote was being taken, Mr. Roosevelt asked a 
member on the floor: '' A^^iat's up? What are 
they voting on ? " ^ ' Oh, it 's a local bill — a 
constitutional amendment. ' ' 

Grover Cleveland became governor while 
Mr. Eoosevelt served at Albany, and on one 
occasion vetoed a bill relating to the control of 
street-car companies. One of the assemblymen, 
discussing the veto, in an attempt to pass the 
measure notwithstanding its disapproval by the 
State executive, cried impressively: 

**Mr. Speaker, I recognize the hand that 
crops out in that veto. I have heard it before. ' ' 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 87 

Some of the members from the lower New 
York districts had caught up the word * ' shibbo- 
leth, ' ' and seemed to regard it as a more correct 
name for their national weapon, the shillalah; 
and the mistakes they made in consequence pro- 
vided Mr. Roosevelt and his friends with food 
for laughter all the rest of the session. 

The chaimian of one of the committees was a 
pompous, good-natured Colonel from the Roch- 
ester district. He was given to indulgence in 
wine ; and on one occasion came, rather the worse 
for his potations, to a meeting of the committee 
which was to receive a delegation of citizens. 
The spokesman was a burly fellow, and the Colo- 
nel, not very sure of his seat— nor of anything 
else— glared at him malevolently. But the visi- 
tor's oratory had a soporific effect; and the 
Colonel drifted away into unconsciousness. 
Presently the orator, who had warmed to his 
work, began hammering the table, and bawling at 
a great rate. The Colonel was roused from his 
sleep. He looked around, realized some phases 
of the situation, partially remembered the orator, 
and came to the conclusion that he had seen that 
speaker on some previous day. It did not occur 
to him that he could have been asleep— and that 



88 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

would have been a bad confession to make, in 
any event. So he pounded on the table with his 
gavel, and said: 

" I 've seen you before, sir. ' ' 

*'This is the first day I ever was here," 
replied the man. 

''Don't tell me I lie, sir. You've addressed 
this committee on a previous day. I remember 
your face and your voice perfectly. No man 
shall speak to this committee twice. The com- 
mittee stands adjourned." 

Then there were certain legislative actions 
which possessed in themselves something of 
opera bouffe qualities. Among these were the 
resolutions expressing sympathy with the 
oppressed peoples in Europe— always couched 
in language offensive to some great power. One 
of these demanded the recall of James Russell 
Lowell, minister to England, because he had 
permitted Great Britain, without a protest, to 
refuse independence to Ireland. 

But, in the main, Mr. Roosevelt's experience 
in the legislature was of very great value to him. 
For one thing, it developed him in precisely the 
direction he needed at the time. He came back 
from those three terms at Albany with a better 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 89 

idea of men and the means to be employed in 
managing them; with a better idea of public 
life, and the means of using it for the benefit of 
the people, and with a far better understanding 
of himself. But there was a consideration still 
more important; he was introduced to the 
nation. A young man, with the handicap of 
wealth and lineage and good breeding, and even 
with a partisan majority against him, he suc- 
ceeded in effecting some most important legisla- 
tion. New York looked toward him hopefully. 
The whole country realized the fact that he was 
one of those referred to in these words by Lord 
Beaconsfield : ' ' They have letters in their pockets 
addressed to posterity ' ' ; and it came to be very 
generally understood that these letters would be 
delivered. 

It is but fair to glance critically at Mr. Roose- 
velt's work in the legislature. It was the begin- 
ning of his public career, and certainly contains 
an earnest of what might fairly be expected of 
him in the days th^t were to follow. 

For one thing, he secured the enactment of a 
civil service law. He was one of that company of 
reformers in both great parties, of which George 
"William Curtis, Senator Edmunds and Grover 



90 THEODOKE KOOSEVELT. 

Cleveland, the latter then governor of New York, 
were members. So far as the public service of 
the State went, the new law was the beginning of 
the merit system, and its advance from there to 
adoption in national legislation was immensely 
facilitated. 

He secured an investigation of the county 
offices of the State, by which it was discovered 
that the principal officials in New York county 
were drawing nearly a million dollars a year in 
fees, while discharging no duties whatever ; and 
all like offices were placed on a moderate— though 
adequate— salary system. 

He began that inquiry into the abuse of police 
powers which has continued until better condi- 
tions prevail, and which will result in purity of 
administration, unless the people of the greatest 
city in the country shall be timid enough or 
supine enough to permit known wickedness to 
prevail. 

He secured an amendment to the Constitution 
of the State taking from the aldermen of New 
York city the supreme executive power, and plac- 
ing it in the hands of the mayor, where it 
belongs. 

But, above all things, he made it clear that 



AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 91 

good government was witiiin the reach of the 
people if only they really desired it, and had the 
courage and honesty and ability to proceed to 
fight for it. 

It was prophesied of him that he could not be 
reelected at the expiration of his first term ; but 
he had little difficulty going back— even for the 
third term. And it is likely he could have 
remained in the assembly much longer if he had 
so desired. But there was other work for him, 
and to this he turned when his task there was 
accomplished. 



CHAPTER V. 

IlSr NA.TIONAL AND CITY POLITICS. 

RECOGNIZED AS A FACTOR IN NATIONAL AFFzVXRS — A LEADER OF 
MEN, LOYAL TO THE BEST TRADITIONS OF HIS PARTY, BUT 
INTENSELY AN AMERICAN — MAINTAINING A SPLENDID INDE- 
PENDENCE—THE FORLORN HOPE IN THE RACE FOR ELECTION 
AS MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY. 

So far from his aggressive methods and inde- 
pendent principles proving the causes of Mr. 
Roosevelt's retirement from political life, as his 
enemies had predicted, these were the very qnali- 
ties which won for him the strong endorsement of 
all that was good in his party organization, and 
among the better classes of that party's follow- 
ing. He had marked ont for himself a very defi- 
nite course, and his watchword was reform. Wlien 
he retired from the legislature, he had already 
become a character of national interest; and so 
far from being consigned to private life, he was 
chosen as a delegate at large to the National 
Republican convention in 1884, and sent unin- 
structed to the councils of his party. 

93 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 93 

It has been humorously said of that period 
that it ''was a time of reform, with a capital R." 
There was a feeling among a number of men, 
for whom George William Curtis, editor of 
Harper's WeeJdy, was a sort of spokesman, that 
civil service deserved more consideration than 
had so far been accorded it. By that term, 
always inaccurate, was meant a betterment of 
the public service by relieving it of the incubus 
of the spoils system. It would have been more 
in accordance with the end aimed at to have 
employed the term ' ' merit system. ' ' For it was 
a known fact that most of the offices were por- 
tioned out to party followers on the basis of 
their party services, and wholly without regard 
to fitness for place. It was desired that selection 
and tenure might depend upon the degree of 
merit men possessed. With or without reason, 
Mr. Blaine was regarded generally as unfriendly 
to the cult advocated by Mr. Curtis, Mr. Andrew 
D. White and Mr. Roosevelt. 

But Mr. Blaine was a candidate for the nom- 
ination to the presidency, and there was no sort 
of doubt he had marshalled an immense strength. 
He had been called ''the magnetic statesman"; 
and he certainly did draw to his support a host 



94 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. - 

of politicians of most remarkable enthusiasm 
and energy. Because it was not believed there 
was much hope for the merit system in the event 
of Mr. Blaine's election— possibly for other rea- 
sons—his aspirations were frowned upon by Mr. 
Curtis and his friends— a very large and very 
respectable company. So that, in sending rep- 
resentatives to the convention, the Republicans 
of New York felt that no greater good could be 
achieved than in the defeat of Mr. Blaine. To 
that end, no specific directions bound the dele- 
gates. They were at liberty to use their influence 
in the convention in such manner as would best 
subserve the interests of reform in general, and 
to aid in the nomination of any man who stood 
for the aims toward which it seemed the party 
and the nation so certainly tended. 

That meant a certain conflict with what had 
been regarded as fealty to party, for active man- 
agers throughout the nation were unquestionably 
in favor of the nomination of Mr. Blaine. But 
Mr. Roosevelt had long before written in his 
political creed: ''I do not number party alle- 
giance among the Ten Commandments." 

In the face of a question of right and wrong, 
he recognized no loyalty to party; and he felt 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 95 

the matter of right was involved in the nomina- 
tion of a candidate for the presidency, because at 
the hour that nomination meant the approval or 
the condemnation of the very reform for which 
good men were striving. 

'^ There are times," he had said, " when it 
may be the duty of a man to break with his party ; 
and there are other times when it may be his 
duty to stand by his party, even when on some 
points he thinks that party is wrong. If we had 
not party allegiance our politics would become 
mere windy anarchy, and under present condi- 
tions our Government would hardly continue at 
all. If we had no independence, we should 
always be running the risk of the most degraded 
Idnd of despotism— the despotism of the party 
boss and the party machine. ' ' 

Having decided that the best interests of his 
party and the nation demanded the defeat of Mr. 
Blaine in the convention, Mr. Roosevelt and his 
friends made a coalition with the Edmunds 
forces, and labored through the days preceding 
the assembling of delegates, to win for the Ver- 
mont statesman a sufficient number to insure a 
nomination. The convention met in the old 
Exposition building, at Chicago ; and there was 



96 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

a season of noise and enthusiasm from the 
arrival of the first delegation. Clamor and 
excitement were the weapons of the Blaine fol- 
lowing, and streets and hotels and places of 
public gathering were loud with hurrahs for 
' ' the man from Maine, ' ' and good-humored chal- 
lenges to his enemies. The opponents of Mr. 
Blaine had no means of employing a similar 
plan of battle, for they had no candidate about 
whom the young men and the energetic party 
workers could rally as they could about that 
remarkable character. There was an abundance 
of stubborn antagonism to the Blaine advance, 
but it was rather of the negative sort. President 
Arthur was a candidate for renomination, but 
he had been a friend of Senator Conkling; and 
no man warm in support of Mr. Blaine could 
possibly be induced to endorse Mr. Arthur. 

Senator Edmunds was regarded, the country 
over, as a type of purity and ability in states- 
manship. It was quite generally believed that 
he represented elements quite the reverse of 
those for which Mr. Blaine stood. And it was 
largely owing to the efforts of Mr. Eoosevelt 
that the New York delegation was recognized 
as the major part of Mr. Edmunds ' strength. 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 97 

The convention was notable, even in the his- 
tory of national assemblies. The room was the 
same as that in which the Grant forces had gone 
down four years before, grim and defiant even 
in defeat. And yet John A. Logan, one of the 
three men who led that ^ ' old guard, ' ' the famous 
three hundred and six, was here as a candidate, 
and perfectly able to capture— at the very least 
—the second place on the ticket. Mr. Roosevelt 
was accorded place with the Committee on Reso- 
lutions. He laid little claim to a part in the 
formulation of the platform, for there had never 
been a doubt in his mind that the man to be 
chosen was far more clearly indicative of the 
policy of the party than any declaration of prin- 
ciples that might be made. And he devoted his 
energies to bringing about a coalition between 
the forces of President Arthur and those of Mr. 
Edmunds. The result was that the latter went 
into the convention second in strength to "the 
plumed knight," a title that Mr. B'laine had 
worn since his nomination at Cincinnati by 
Colonel Ingersoll in 1876. 

The student of practical politics will be inter- 
ested to turn back the files of some daily paper, 
and read the record of that convention. There 



^ 



A 



98 THEODOKE EOUSEVELT. 

was a struggle at the beginning for the selection 
of a temporary chairman. The name of Mr. 
Lynch, a colored man from Louisiana, had been 
put forward, and there was a sentiment that 
this was for the purpose of flattering the colored 
men in the convention, with no purpose of doing 
more than to bestow honorable mention. But in 
a twinkling the vote of Illinois, well held in 
the hand of General Logan, was added to the 
^ strength of the black man, and he was chosen to 

the position. The act had the double effect of 
winning the good will of the colored delegates 
to General Logan, in whatever service he might 
need them, and of convincing the Blaine follow- 
ing that the Illinois man would have to be reck- 
oned with, whatever contingencies might arise. 

When Mr. Roosevelt saw the result of that 
vote, he got up from the floor of the convention, 
and went out to the committee room, where he 
met a number of his confreres. 

' ' Blaine will be nominated, ' ' he said. 

"WhjV^ asked one of the most experienced 
politicians of the country. 

''Because Logan has made it possible." 

It was looked upon as the emotional estimate 
of a young man, new to practical politics. The 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 99 

leaders of the auti-Blaine contingent believed 
themselves spokesmen of all that was reputable 
and the custodians of all that was honorable in 
their party. And it was difficult for them to* 
believe that the representatives chosen by that 
party in every section of the country could refuse 
to follow them. 

But the young man from New York, the 
young man who had shattered the ring that had 
been sending assemblymen from Murray Hill, 
and who had forced a merit law through a hos- 
tile legislature, was right. 

Mr. Blaine was nominated. 

The first day of the convention was taken up 
in temporary organization. The second saw the 
wrangle over a platform, and the debate which 
waked when the attempt was made to pledge 
every member of the convention to the support 
of the ticket to be nominated. And at 10 o'clock 
on the morning of June 5, 1884, the hour for 
conflict had come. In the first ballot Mr. Blaine 
led, with Mr. Edmunds a close second, and the 
following list of "favorite sons" trailing away 
with unimportant votes: Arthur, Logan, Haw- 
ley, W. T. Sherman and Robert Lincoln. 

The second ballot showed a decided gain for 



100 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

the man from Maine. Mr. Roosevelt and his 
friends worked as they never had worked before, 
for they believed the nomination of that man 
meant the defeat of the party at the polls ; but 
it was to no avail. The organization of the 
Blaine forces had been far too thorough. Not 
only were the delegates in general infected with • 
that enthusiasm which roused wherever his 
name was mentioned, but a careful reading of 
the reports, as well as the testimony of those— 
still living— who attended the convention, is to 
the effect that the galleries were packed with 
Blaine adherents. When ''nominations were in 
order," Edmund's name evoked a decorous and 
respectable cheering. President Arthur's nom- 
ination was greeted with all the applause which 
Federal officials, grateful for favors expected, 
could give it. Robert Lincoln won but a perfunc- 
tory greeting. But when the blind preacher 
from Ohio told of the matchless qualities of 
James G. Blaine, there was a continuous and 
deafening roar of applause for the space of fif- 
teen minutes; and it began anew at intervals, 
and roared again when the peroration was con- 
cluded. 

Blaine was the idol of the convention I 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 101 

The fourth and last ballot was as follows : 

Blaine 541 

^ Arthur 207 

"Cj Edmunds 41 

0^ Logan 7 

^ Hawley 15 

f Lincoln 2 

<N 

^ 813 

Necessary to a choice 407 

And it seemed that the young reformer from 
New York had lost. Yet in the course of time it 
was discovered by even the most practical poli- 
ticians of his party that every prophecy he had 
made was realized. The nominee' of that con- 
vention was defeated at the polls in November— 
the first of his party to suffer such a fate in 
twenty-four years. 

It is a little curious to note that in this period 
of his life Mr. Roosevelt was the close personal 
friend of Mr. Grover Cleveland, then governor 
of New York, and who in this same summer was 
nominated as the candidate of the Democrats for 
the presidential chair. Both were advocates of 
reform in politics, and that wiser reform which 
goes to the fact of government. To men not 



102 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

fully informed as to the situation in New York 
State, Mr. Cleveland's doctrine may have been 
regarded as not wholly sincere; for he was a 
member of the parfy which, in a national way, 
was out of power. And it was national politics 
as much as state, that they sought to purify. 
But there was as great a degree of sincerity, 
very likely, in the position of the Democrat as in 
that of the Republican, even in the broader field. 
But that man who views both Mr. Cleveland and 
Mr. Roosevelt, in this campaign of 1884, as seek- 
ers after either state or national advantage, 
lacks information as to the motives that con- 
trolled them. Mr. Cleveland, because his party 
had long been out of power in the nation, has 
been accused of an ulterior motive in seconding 
those measures of reform in the public service 
for which Mr. Roosevelt so sturdily battled. And 
the latter has been regarded as trying for the 
command of forces in the Empire State. But 
both estimates are wrong. Mr. Cleveland could 
hardly have departed in so short a time from the 
course which had engrossed him from the begin- 
ning, for he was a ' ' York State man ' ' ; and it is 
doubtful if he realized then the national possibil- 
ities that were opening before him. On the other 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 103 

liand, it would be folly to accuse Mr. Roosevelt 
of cribbing and confining liis labors to the hori- 
zon of state politics. He felt the need of reform 
there as much as did Mr. Curtis. But he saw 
the need of a national change of heart; and all 
his effort in the political arena was devoted to 
securing it. 

And yet these two men were friends. They 
were both battling for a better government, 
because they both believed a better govern- 
ment was possible, and was— by the very exi- 
gency of the occasion— made necessary. Mr. 
Roosevelt was defeated in his labors at the 
national convention, and a campaign of noise 
and enthusiasm began immediately , and re- 
minded him for five months of the failure 
recorded against him. 

His personal friend, Mr. Cleveland, repre- 
sented the very principles, so far as reform and 
the merit system were concerned, for which he 
had battled. And yet not even the most inveter- 
ate enemy of Mr. Roosevelt has ever accused him 
of supporting his friend in the election, at the 
expense of the nominee of his party. 

Therein is found the realization of his doc- 
trine that a man may at times follow the lead of 



104 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

his party even when he believes it to be wrong. 
It may bring little comfort to the wight who 
expects a partisan to desert his party at each 
trivial offense; but it shows none the less a 
political sagacity which prevents a man sacrific- 
ing all his influence by "bolting" every time his 
suggestions are not engrafted into law. It is a 
temptation peculiarly seductive to young men. 
But it failed to win this stalwart son of New 
York. He voted in the convention against bind- 
ing the delegates to support the nominee— who- 
ever this might be. But when that nomination 
was recorded, he gave his support to the ticket, 
so far as voting went. And had not a personal 
calamity— the death of his mother— fallen at this 
period, he would doubtless have given an even 
more active support to the choice of his party at 
Chicago. 

As it was he maintained his relations with 
his fellows inside the organization. And though 
he withdrew from active intercourse with them, 
and devoted himself for some years to more 
stirring events in the far West, there was no 
blot on his partisan escutcheon. And when the 
summer of 1886 brought the demand for a can- 
didate for the mayoral chair in the city of New 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 105 

York, his was the one name used to conjure with. 
Grover Cleveland was President of the United 
States. Less than two years had elapsed since 
his election to that high office. Both personally 
and politically he was, at the hour, invincibly 
strong. The Democrats of the city had nomi- 
nated a ticket of exceptional excellence. Hon. 
Abram Hewitt was chosen as the standard- 
bearer in the municipal fight, and he was recog- 
nized the country over as a man of clean morals 
and high ideals. Against him the independents 
nominated Henry George, then on the top wave 
of a popularity won with his writings. For the 
author of ' ' Progress and Poverty ' ' expressed the 
case of the "army of discontent"; and New 
York city had hailed him. 

The election occurred in November, and Mr. 
Eoosevelt met his second defeat in political life. 
Mr. Hewitt's vote was 90,552. That of Mr. 
George was 68,110, while 60,435 ballots were 
deposited for Mr. Roosevelt. It was, from the 
beginning, the most hopeless race imaginable. 
There was no sort of chance for the defeat of the 
opposing ticket, except in the retirement of the 
George ticket. And as the friends of that theo- 
rist insisted on his remaining in the field, Mr. 



106 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

Roosevelt's showing was the least considerable 
of the three. 

If he had been a man of ordinary timber, that 
would have been the last of him. He had already 
been recognized as a man of note. Harper's 
Weekly had been placing him in complimentary 
cartoons ever since the passage of the merit law 
at Albany, yet he had been overthrown by the 
voters of his city. But this was a matter of the 
smallest concern to him. He knew he was right, 
and was certain he could ''bide the lapse of 
time." It would surely bring his justification. 

Meantime he withdrew from the "madding 
crowd." Two years before, when the death of 
his wife and of his mother had combined to 
depress him, he had gone to the far Northwest, 
and established a home on the banks of the upper 
Missouri. He had engaged in the cattle industry. 
He had renewed his habit of hunting. Whether 
New York city elected or rejected him was a mat- 
ter of the smallest importance, for he was almost 
more a guest than a resident in the city of his 
birth when his friends, to the number of more 
than sixty thousand, rallied to his standard in 
the fall of 1886. 

Now, in this portion of his life, no less than 



IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 107 

in those passages where success attended him, 
it is fair to take note of the man's accomplish- 
ment. In the first place it must not be under- 
stood for a moment that he went to the ranch life 
in the Bad Lands because of reverses in his expe- 
rience. He went there when he was twenty-six 
years old. He had already served three terms 
in the assembly of his State. His wife had died, 
and his mother— his sole remaining parent— 
had followed. He was come to the time for 
thought. And it is a curious phase of the man's 
career that he turned in this hour of retirement 
to the employment of those attributes with which 
his previous study had supplied him. He 
thought, and he wrote. And the nomination for 
the mayoralty-, wholly unsolicited, made small 
disturbance in the course of his development. He 
had known the sweets of victory. He had sup- 
ported the crushing burden of defeat. And he 
had found in the great plains of the Northwest 
the very experience of all others that could 
broaden and deepen his being. He gathered 
there the physical power which was to provide 
the basis for his labors later on. He was for the 
time near to nature; and in that communion 
he gathered a quality of wisdom and of strength 



108 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

which nothing else could have furnished. Some 
of his countrymen knew the city, with all its 
multifarious environment. Some knew the coun- 
try, and were narrowed in their range of vision, 
hampered in their view. But he was gathering 
the material and arriving at the view-point 
which should equip him for judging and weigh- 
ing composite matters later on. 

Some men are great in victory, but not so 
constituted as to brook reverses. Of these was 
Senator Conkling, of Mr. Roosevelt's own State. 
Some are developed while continually oppressed 
by adverse majorities. Of these was Mr. Henry 
G-eorge, who contributed to Mr. Roosevelt's 
defeat. But here was a man superior to the 
variations of fortune, and steadfast alone in his 
progress toward the one ideal. He stood for 
good government as much as in the days of his 
successes at Albany. He helped the nation to 
better citizenship by realizing a better Ameri- 
canism himself. And in these years when fail- 
ure confronted him he proved the metal that was 
in him more than ever he had done in the days 
of his most exuberant triumph. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RANCHING IN THE BAX> LANDS. 

COMEADE WITH THE COWBOYS — WINS THE CONFIDENCE AND 
ESTEEM OF HUNTERS, RANCHMEN AND PIONEERS — " BUSTING " 
BRONCHOS — ADVENTURES WITH WILD BEASTS — THRILLING 
FIGHT WITH A GRIZZLY. 

The adventurous spirit was surely a part of 
Theodore Roosevelt 's heritage ; and when, after 
the completion of his college course, he felt that 
life had given him the world as the field of his 
activities, he naturally felt a desire for so much 
spice of adventure as prudence and good judg- 
ment would i)ermit. Those were "piping times 
of peace." There was no war with which his 
country was concerned; and he was far from 
the type of fortune's soldier who makes the 
cause of distant peoples his vital concern. He 
could find too much of utility nearer home. 

There were no gold-fields. In the busy years 
when the American Republic was gathering for 
the world-empire which has come to it later, 

109 



110 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

the man of adventurous spirit was hard pressed 
to employ his energies. 

It happened in this period that great ranches 
were being established in the far Northwest. 
Before the Civil War the plains of Texas had 
been dotted with cattle. Little attention was 
paid to them until the latter days of that strug- 
gle. Then it was found that beef of any kind 
was rare and difficult to get. The herds of 
Texas became the commissary of two armies, 
and, when the war was over, sagacious men 
took the hint and began to engage in the 
cattle business. At first Texas remained the 
breeding ground. Ranchmen drove their young 
cattle north for three years of feeding before 
shij^ping them to market. But as the years 
passed they found the "range" taken up. The 
trail from the Panhandle of Texas to the pasture 
lands of the North had been strung with barbed 
wire of farmers ; and the cattlemen had to find 
preserves of their own. That forced the devel- 
opment of the Upper Missouri country. And 
the coincident building of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad provided a means of reaching markets. 

Scores of ranches were opened in that new 
country, lately wrested from the Indians. The 



RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. Ill 

Marquis de Mores, a picturesque Frenchman, 
was one of those who took advantage of the for- 
tune offered, and he spent a magnificent dot 
establishing the town of Medora, an abortive 
city crowned with the name of his wife. 

Mr. Eoosevelt, fretting at the irksomeness 
of the law as a study, realizing vaguely the 
greater career that was in store for him, cast his 
eyes to the one Eldorado which promised scope 
for his energy and fuel for those fires of adven- 
ture which burned within Mm, went to the ' ' Bad 
Lands, ' ' and engaged in the life of a rancher. It 
was with no purpose of gaining wealth. While 
by no means one of the rich men of the nation, 
since wealth had come to be measured in mil- 
lions, he had still no need to earn a competence. 
But there was a breadth and freedom, a romance 
and exhilaration in the prospect which attracted 
him. 

So he established himself on the Little Mis- 
souri, and opened two cattle ranches. One was 
called ''Chimney Butte"; the other ''The 
Elkhorn. ' ' Here at intervals, for years, he lived 
a life of vigor and activity, developing those 
lungs that had suffered somewhat in the labor of 
study, and the living in cities; and wakened as 



112 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

well that resourcefulness in danger, that self- 
reliance and the power to combat which his 
future career was to require. 

At the same time he passed there many de- 
lightful months. There was absolutely no limit 
to the range he might ride. Remember it was in 
the early eighties, when every day was a test of 
endurance, and every night a demonstration of 
courage. It is little wonder if the tonic quality 
of the great Northwest entered into his frame, 
and added both to his stature and his strength. 
Mr. Itoosevelt has himself laughingly said he 
made little money on his cattle ranches. But he 
won something that cannot be measured in 
money ; for he gave himself, at the only period 
when the time was at his command, the precise 
form of development that has proven so valuable 
in his later life— and that will arm him to the end. 

There was adventure in plenty. A fragment, 
taken from his own book, ''Hunting Trips of a 
Ranchman," gives a brief but vivid suggestion 
of the kind of life he led. Together with a com- 
panion, he had started on the trail of a huge 
grizzly bear. ''We could still follow the tracks 
by the slight scrapes of the claws on the bark, 
or by the bent and broken twigs; and we ad- 



EANCHINQ IN THE BAD LANDS. 113 

vanced witli noiseless caution, slowly climbing 
over dead trunks and upturned stumps, and not 
letting a branch rustle or catch our clothes. 
When in the middle of the thicket we crossed 
what was almost a breastwork of fallen logs, 
and Merrifield, who was leading, paused by the 
upright stem of a large pine. And there, not ten 
steps off, was the great bear, slowly rising from 
his bed among the young spruces. He had heard 
us, but apiDarently hardly knew where or what we 
were, for he reared up on his haunches sidewise 
to us. Then he saw us, and dropped down again 
on all fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and 
shoulders seeming to bristle as he turned toward 
us. As he sank down on his forefeet I raised the 
rifle. His head was bent slightly down, and 
when I saw the top of the white head fairly 
between the small, glittering, evil eyes, I pulled 
trigger. Half rising up, the huge beast fell over 
on his side in the death-throes, the ball having 
gone into his brain, striking as fairly between 
the eyes as if the distance had been measured 
by a carpenter 's rule. The whole thing was over 
in twenty seconds from the time I sighted the 
game. ' ' 

There come times, however, when the hunter 



114 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

becomes the hunted— a circumstance that has 
been noted by pursuers of big game in other 
lands. Mr. Roosevelt has enjoyed the distinction 
of even this experience. It is pretty well con- 
ceded by sportsmen generally that of all animals 
on this continent the one most dangerous is a 
grizzly bear when wounded. Few men, in such 
trial, have escaped with their lives. It is still 
more remarkable to have come away scatheless. 
And yet that was the good fortune of this man ; 
and the story cannot be better told than in the 
language which he has himself employed in 
describing the adventure. 

"I held true, aiming behind the shoulder," 
he says in the course of his report of a hunt in 
Idaho, "and my bullet shattered the point or 
lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. 
Instantly the great bear turned with a hoarse 
roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody 
foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of 
his white fangs; and then he charged straight 
at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel 
bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited till 
he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped 
it, with a ball which entered his chest and went 
through the cavitv of his bodv: but he neither 



RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 115 

swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did 
not know that I had struck him. He came 
steadily on, and in another moment was almost 
upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet 
went low, smashing his lower jaw and going into 
the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled 
the trigger ; and through the hanging smoke the 
first thing I saw was his paw, as he made a 
vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge 
carried him past. As he struck he lurched for- 
ward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his 
muzzle hit the ground ; but he recovered himself 
and made two or three jumps onward, while I 
hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the 
magazine, my rifle holding but four, all of which 
I had fired. Then he tried to pull up ; but as he 
did so, his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, 
his head drooped, and he rolled over and over 
like a shot rabbit. Each of my first two bullets 
had inflicted a mortal wound. ' ' 

It has all the thrill of an excerpt from the 
journal of Lewis and Clarke, with the simple 
directness of narration which might be expected 
from a man who appreciated the peril he had 
been in, and was too sensible for boasting. 

Thrilling as are the stories, however, it is cer- 



116 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

tain that hunting did not make up the bulk of 
activity in ranching. The cattle ranged pretty 
much at will over mountain, valley and plain, 
the cowboys keeping track of them with a sagac- 
ity that did not embrace the labor of counting, 
and with a care which protected the stock at 
night, and in case of stonns. The ponies were 
of the small, wiry kind which move quickly, and 
can turn like a flash in tlie process of " cutting- 
out " a steer or cow from a herd where it does 
not belong. The exigencies of the cattle busi- 
ness rendered necessary the presence of eighty 
ponies on Mr. Roosevelt's two ranches. Besides 
these were a number of larger horses, for the use 
of the owner or the foreman. There was plenty 
of work, and every day brought its cares. In 
the branding season there was scarcely any rest, 
night or day, for the riding was hard, and almost 
incessant. But Mr. Roosevelt seemed to thrive 
on the open air and the exercise, and always 
returned from his trips to his ranches greatly 
improved in health, and with added zest for the 
activities of the more jjopulous East. 

Some idea of his life on the ranch will be of 
interest to the reader. It was a type of the habit 
and occupation of all engaged in similar enter- 



RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 117 

prises, with the exception that the interior of his 
ranch house bore some evidences of a taste and 
training, some reminders of another environ- 
ment, which were ahnost unknown in the homes 
of cattle men in the Bad Lands. His house— the 
one chosen and occupied as his residence— stood 
on the brink of the Little Missouri river. From 
the low, long veranda, shaded by leafy cotton- 
woods, one could look across sand-bars and shal- 
lows to a strip of meadow land, behind which 
rose a line of sheer cliffs and grassy plateaus. 
The veranda was a pleasant place in the summer 
evenings, when a cool breeze stirred along the 
river, and blew in the faces of the tired men. 

The one-story house of hewn logs was clean 
and neat, with many rooms, so that each member 
of the household might be alone if he wished it. 
The nights, even in summer, were cool and 
pleasant, and there were plenty of bearskins 
and buffalo robes, many of them trophies of Mr. 
Roosevelt's own skill with the rifle; and with 
these one might bid defiance even to the bitter 
cold of winter. In all seasons, when at the 
ranch, he was visited by friends from the East ; 
and in winter the long evenings were spent sit- 
ting around the great fireplace where the pine 



118 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

logs roared and crackled. Kides stood in the 
corners of the room, or rested across elk antlers 
which jutted from over the fireplace. Heavy 
overcoats of wolf-skin or coon-skin, and caps 
and gauntlets made from the fur of otter or 
beaver, hung from deer horns ranged along the 
wall, or thnist into beams and rafters. 

The traveler across those plains, which 
seemed like desolate wastes, would expect no 
entertaimnent further than food and lodging, 
even at the most pretentious of ranches. But 
in this home of the Harvard man there were 
books of the best, magazines from Eastera cities, 
and newspapers from every capital in Europe. 
The mail-carrier did not come daily, and was 
not entii"ely certain to arrive within the interval 
of a week. But when he did come, he was very 
certain to bring letters from prominent men in 
every section of the nation ; the freshest product 
of the gi'eat publishei*s, and pictures that could 
enlighten the gloom of any home. "Kough board 
shelves,'* says Mr. Koosevelt, in his ehaiming 
"Hunting Trips of a Kanchman,'* "hold a num- 
ber of books witliout which some of the evenings 
would be long inde^l. No ranchman who loves 
sport'*— and nearly every one of them does— 



RANCHING IN TIIK BAD LANDS. II!) 

"can afford to be without Van Dyke's 'Still 
Hunter,' Dodge's 'Plains of the Great West,' or 
(baton's 'Deer and Anteh)pe of America'; and 
Coues' 'Birds of the Northwest' will be valued 
if he cares at all for natural history. As for 
Irving, Hawthorne, Cooper, Lowell, and the 
other standbys, T suppose no man, either East 
or West, would willingly be long without them. 
And for lighter reading there are dreamy Ik 
Marvel, Burroughs' breezy pages, and the 
quaint, pathetic character sketches of the South- 
ern writers— Cable, Craddock, Macon, Joel 
Chandler Harris, and sweet Sherwood Bonner. 
And when one is in the Bad Lands, he feels as if 
they somehow look just exactly as Poe's tales 
and poems sound." 

There is a picture of the inner life of the 
man while engaged in a vocation that seems 
little related to the finer sensibilities. It may 
be this home was not typical of the ranches 
in general; and yet, since the men engaged in 
business there were for the most part men of 
means, who had been accustomed to refinements 
of life elsewhere, it is likely this view of Chim- 
ney Butte in some fair measure typifies the 
domestic provision of the ranchmen in general. 



120 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

But it accentuates this fact: A man carries 
his character with him. And it seems to have 
been impossible for this man to leave behind him 
at any time the bond that holds the true Amer- 
ican to the interests and activities of the nation. 
An effect of it was that when he returned to the 
East, it was by no means the coming from the 
banishment that his friends there imagined. 
They had little of importance to tell him. He 
had kept pace with events, as they had ; and even 
the comment of the world was in his possession. 
It may have been a wise dispensation of Provi- 
dence which denied large financial returns to the 
men who risked such fortunes, and expended 
such effort in developing the cattle country of the 
Northwest. There is just a possibility that much 
prosperity would have diverted Mr. Roosevelt, at 
least for some years, from these public labors 
in his native State which came to make up so 
much of his subsequent life. But, in any event, 
neither the distance from the center of govern- 
ment nor the exactions of ranch life left a void 
in his career. He must have been an exceed- 
ingly industrious man; for in the years while 
there in the Bad Lands, he did much of the writ- 
ing which has proved him a master of composi- 




^'M '"^ 



BUSTING A BRONCHO 



RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 121 

tion, as well as a man of the most tireless action. 
As in the case of all new countries, there was 
a very lax moral code in the Bad Lands at the 
time Mr. Roosevelt established himself there as 
a ranchman. It had been the habit of some 
cowboys to drive into the herds they were keep- 
ing any stray cattle they encountered in riding 
about the range ; and it was equally the habit of 
some ranchmen, even with knowledge of this 
irregular possession, to accept the '^ findings" 
and have the animals branded as their own. 

One of the first rules enunciated by Mr. 
Roosevelt was that his cowboys would not be 
permitted to "rustle." That is, they should not 
permit cattle not his own to come into his herds. 
Pie was very positive about this, and his riders 
acted accordingly. But there was another rule, 
equally positive. He would permit no man to 
take cattle belonging to him. The habit had 
become too well established for instant breaking, 
and his stock continued to be stolen. He estab- 
lished one case very clearly, and with one of his 
men rode two weeks straight after the two cul- 
prits who had robbed him, captured them, 
brought them back to Medora, and sent both to 
the penitentiary at Mandan. 



122 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

Tliat was the end of the '4'ustling" in the 
Bad Lands. He established a better grade of 
morals than had existed before; and he quick- 
ened the sense of respect for law and order 
throughout the whole cattle country. 

As to the details of ranch work, he has him- 
self left a sufficient record. In one of his vol- 
umes he gives a most graphic description of the 
now almost forgotten ''round-up." ''A ranch- 
man is kept busy most of the time, but his hard- 
est work comes with the spring and fall round- 
ups, when the calves are branded, or the beeves 
gathered for market. Our round-up district 
includes the Beaver and Little Beaver creeks. 
All the ranches along the line of these two creeks, 
and the river spaces between, join in sending 
from one to four men to the round-up, each man 
taking eight ponies ; and for every six or seven 
men there will be a four-horse wagon to carry 
the blankets and mess Idt. The whole, including 
perhaps forty or fifty cowboys, is under the head 
of one first-class foreman, styled the captain of 
the round-up. 

''Beginning at one end of the line, the cow- 
boys, divided into small parties, scour the neigh- 
boring country, and in the evening come to the 



RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 123 

appointed place with all the cattle they have seen. 
This big herd, together with the pony herd, is 
guarded and watched all night, and driven dur- 
ing the day. At each home ranch, where there is 
always a large corral fitted for the purpose, 
all the cattle of that brand are cut out from the 
rest of the herd, which is to continue its journey, 
and the cows and calves are driven into the cor- 
ral, where the latter are roped, thrown and 
branded. 

''Cutting out cattle, next to managing a 
stampeded herd at night, is that part of the cow- 
boy's work needing the boldest and most skilful 
horsemanship. A young heifer or steer is very 
loath to leave the herd, always tries to break 
back into it, can run like a deer, and can dodge 
like a rabbit. But a thorough cattle-pony enjoys 
the work as much as its rider, and follows the 
beast like a four-footed fate through every dou- 
ble and turn. When the work is over for the day, 
the men gather around the fire for an hour or 
two to sing songs, talk, smoke and tell stories. 
And he who has a good voice, or better still, can 
play the fiddle or banjo, is sure to receive his 
meed of most sincere homage." 

The ranchman and the cowboy, as these were 



124 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

known twenty to thirty years ago, have passed 
away. The great ranges have been cut into 
smaller holdings, and railways run through most 
of the regions where formerly herds of thousands 
found their food in summer, and their shelter in 
winter. No great fortunes will ever again be 
invested in that enterprise, as was the case from 
1875 to 1885. In a smaller way, and with more 
modest requirements as to invested capital, it 
will continue indefinitely. But the old regime 
has passed away in Montana as effectively as in 
Kansas or Nebraska. The round-up has become 
a thing of the past— in any large and impressive 
sense. But there will be no better description of 
it written than this by a man who learned the 
business from beginning to end, who mastered it, 
who drew from it all the pleasures and benefits 
it could afford, and who saw and appreciated 
every graphic and interesting detail in its cate- 
gory. 

For one thing, Mr. Roosevelt's life as a 
ranchman in the Bad Lands afforded him some 
practical ideas on the much-mooted Indian ques- 
tion. It has been a part of his good fortune, 
apparently, to find in the phases of a varied 



KANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 125 

experience some actual data which will prove 
useful in his present larger public career. 

When his cattle came to the Little Missouri 
country, the region was inhabited by less than a 
score of white hunters, and a good many Indians 
ranged across the plains at all times, and in every 
direction. The title of the white hunters was 
certainly as good as that of the Indians to the 
lands claimed by the latter. Yet nobody dreamed 
of asserting that the white hunters owned the 
country, or that they could hold it against the 
advance of subsequent settlers. Each could have 
filed his claim to a quarter-section of land— 160 
acres— under the laws of the nation, and might 
have held that much against any imaginable 
power. But there was no reason for his monopo- 
lizing more. ^'And," Mr. Eoosevelt declares, 
"the Indians should be treated in just the 
same way that we treat the white settlers. Give 
each his claim to a quarter-section. If, as 
generally happens, he should decline this, then 
let him share the fate of the thousands of white 
hunters who have lived on the game that the set- 
tlement of the country has exterminated, and let 
him, like these whites who will not work, perish 
from the face of the earth which he encumbers. 



126 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

The doctrine seems merciless, and so it is. But 
it is just and rational, for all that. It does not 
do to be too merciful to the few at the cost of 
justice to the many. The cattlemen at least keep 
herds and build houses on the land. Yet I would 
not for a moment debar settlers from the right of 
entry to the cattle country, though their coming 
in means the destruction of us and our industry. ' ' 

There is a rugged justice in the sentiment, 
and a proof of disinterestedness which adds to 
the weight of the principle enunciated. 

The profits in the business were at first very 
great; and the chances for losses were great 
as well. One winter of unusual severity would 
work sad havoc among the cattle, particularly 
the young heifers; and a peculiar disease was 
likely to attack the herd, destroying thousands in 
a week. But the cost of producing beef, when 
carried on as it was then, was very small. The 
charge for freight from the upper Missouri 
country to the market at Chicago or Omaha made 
up the largest item. There were no stables for 
that complete shelter which a farmer of the mid- 
dle country, or the East, would understand by 
the work. The investment was chiefly for wages 
paid to cowboys; and these were never very 



RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 127 

large. So that fortunes were gathered in ranch- 
ing. But it is significant that there are no cattle 
kings, even in the country where the cattle indus- 
try has been most largely followed. The woods 
of Michigan and Wisconsin have produced lum- 
ber kings ; the hills of Idaho and Nevada- and 
half a dozen other States have presented mining 
kings to the nation, and the sugar kings and 
kings of various other industries abound every- 
where. But the cattle king has been always a 
star of brief shining, and his domain has never 
been an extensive one. He did a great deal in 
the development of the frontier country, and con- 
tributed much to the food supply of the world. 
But he did prett}^ well, as a general rule, if he 
took out of the business as much as he put in— 
and enjoyed life while the occupation lasted. 

As for Mr. Roosevelt's experience in ranch 
life, it can only be said that he was most happy 
in it, and that while it did not add greatly to his 
fortunes, it did not entail a failure. It came at 
a period in his life— perhaps the only one he 
could have found— when he had the time for it; 
when it fitted into the rounding and filling of 
his personality. In some measure it contained 
the elements of a special wisdom, of which he 



128 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

seems to have taken advantage, and it withdrew 
him so far from "the madding crowd" that he 
had opportunity for much writing which his 
countrymen have very keenly enjoyed. 

His ' ' Eanch Life in the Bad Lands ' ' was one 
of his most valuable ventures. 



CHAPTER VII. 

EOOSEVELT AS AN AUTHOE. 

FIRST AUTHOR TO BECOME PRESIDENT — BEGINNING AS EDITOR 
OF HIS COLLEGE PAPER, HE DEVELOPS STRIKING LITERARY 
TALENT — SUCCESS OF HIS FIRST WORK, ' ' NAVAL WAR OP 
1812," "WINNING OF THE WEST," "THE STRENUOUS LIFE 
AND OTHER ESSAYS," "OLIVER CROMWELL" — A VOLUMINOUS 
WRITER. 

For the first time in the history of America 
an author is at the head of the Government,— an 
author, too, of whom the country may well be 
proud. It lends a radiance to letters in the new 
world to have for the first citizen of the land a 
man who is not only a statesman and a historian 
but a poet as well, for in all his writings Mr. 
Roosevelt discovers that broad comprehension 
and deep sympathy with nature in all its forms 
that is the delight of the poet and is possessed by 
him alone. It is astonishing that one who has 
taken such an active part in the political life of 
the nation, as well as that of his native State and 
city, should have found time to produce so many 
volumes on subjects requiring great research as 
well as an intimate knowledge of the histories of 

129 



130 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

many governments and the lives of many peo- 
ples. Not only has Mr. Roosevelt in the ' ' Win- 
ning of the West" given to the world the best 
record of the settlement and development of 
America, but he has written into the pages of 
that splendid work the very spirit of the nation 
and illumined the stirring drama of the settle- 
ment of these States with the glory of sublime 
patriotism which cannot fail to have a marked 
influence on the minds of the coming genera- 
tions. 

It has been claimed by some that the historian 
should be one in whom the faculty of the imagi- 
nation was almost, if not entirely, lacking. These 
critics hold that history should be a colorless 
record of facts as they transpired, and that the 
thought of the author should have no place in 
the record of the times he would portray. If this 
be the true criterion by which a historian is to 
be judged, then is Mr. Roosevelt going far afield 
when he sets himself to write history. His mind 
is so active and his thought so positive that the 
compilation of facts and dates without their 
accompanying significance would repel him in 
the same measure that he is attracted by fierce 
battles on sea and land, and the individual in- 



AS AN AUTHOR. 131 

stances of heroism and devotion. It is this fac- 
ulty of the imagination that places Mr. Roose- 
velt's writings on American subjects in the front 
rank of all our country's records and gives to his 
descriptions of frontier life a genuine value. 
Much that he has written has its foundation in 
actual experience, and he describes these events 
with a fidelity to nature and a dramatic power 
that must thrill the dullest reader, while to those 
who are familiar with the scenes and actions 
which make up the greater part of his books on 
the Far West, his writings have an indescribable 
fascination. 

For a man who is still young Mr. Roosevelt 
has a large number of books to his credit. He 
has been barely twenty years out of college. 
Sixteen of these years he has spent in active and 
laborious public service. A man who has been 
a member of the Legislature, Civil-Service Com- 
missioner, President of the Police Board of New 
York, Vice-President of the United States, and 
President, all within a score of years, could 
hardly be expected to be a voluminous writer. 
But in that period Mr. Roosevelt has published 
a half a dozen serious works on history and biog- 
raphy, three original works on hunting and 



132 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

ranch life, a history of the ' ' Rough Riders ' ' and 
several volumes of essays of high character and 
permanent value. 

Mr. Roosevelt's first venture in the field of 
letters (aside from a share in college journal- 
ism) was made in 1882, just two years after his 
graduation from Harvard, and while he was a 
member of the assembly of New York State. 
The theme chosen gives an insight into the char- 
acter of the man on the threshold of a career that 
was eventually to terminate in the White House. 
He was a born patriot, and the dash and pluck 
of the American seamen must have appealed 
strongly to the fighting side of his nature. His 
first work, a history of ''The Naval War of 
1812," found a ready response among the men 
who go down to the sea in ships for the honor 
of their country 's flag, and the book at once took 
high rank among the treatises of its kind. The 
demand was such as to warrant the appearance 
of a third edition within a year, enlarged by a 
chapter describing Jackson's victory at New 
Orleans. Of this second edition Mr. W. P. Trent, 
writing in the Forum for July, 1896, says: 
' ' This added chapter and certain remarks in the 
new preface are more important to the critic of 



AS AN AUTHOR. 133 

Mr. Roosevelt's work than all the rest of his 
interesting book, for they show that thus early 
the theme of his greatest work— the career and 
prowess of the Western frontiersman— had laid 
fast hold upon his imagination. ' ' 

This chapter deals with the victory of Jack- 
son and his Tennesseeans at New Orleans. The 
author's style here shows all the vigor, fluency 
and epigrammatic strength which has become 
so characteristic of his later utterances. It is a 
chapter that must be consulted by every student 
of American history who wishes to understand 
what is likely to always remain one of the most 
brilliant feats of arms of a nation rich in such 
exploits. The nervous force of Mr. Roosevelt's 
style found room for full play in the description 
of this great and brilliant battle whose story will 
ever be a stimulus to the lovers of heroic deeds. 

In the closing paragraph of this chapter of 
his naval history the author pays the following 
tribute to General Jackson: ''The American 
soldiers deserve great credit for doing so well, 
but greater credit still belongs to Andrew Jack- 
son, who, with his cool head and quick eye, his 
stout heart and strong hand, stands out in history 
as the ablest general the United States produced 



134 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

from the outbreak of the Revolution down to 
the beginning of the Great Rebellion." Such 
unqualified praise is rare in the writings of Mr. 
Roosevelt. He is an unusually outspoken critic, 
and often deals savagely with characters that 
have become the idols of other American writers. 
But his admiration for the famous Indian-fighter 
is unbounded. He describes the opening of the 
battle of New Orleans as follows : *'0n the 8th 
of December, 1814, the foremost vessels of the 
British fleet, among their number the great two- 
decker Tonnant, carrying the admiral's flag, 
anchored off the Chandeleur Islands; and as 
the current of the Mississippi was too strong to 
be easily breasted, the English leaders deter- 
mined to bring their men by boats through the 
bayous and disembark them on the bank of the 
river ten miles below the wealthy city at whose 
capture they were aiming. There was but one 
thing to prevent the success of this plan, and that 
was the presence in the bayous of five American 
gunboats, manned by a hundred and eighty men 
and commanded by Lieutenant-Commander 
Catesby Jones, a very shrewd fighter. So against 
him was sent Captain Nicholas Lockyer with 
forty-five barges and nearly a thousand sailors 



AS AN AUTHOR. 135 

and marines. . . . The British rowed up 
with strong, swift strokes through a murderous 
fire of great guns and musketry; the vessels 
were grappled amid fierce resistance ; the board- 
ing-nettings were slashed through and cut away 
with furious fighting and the decks were gained ; 
and one by one, at push of pike and cutlass 
stroke, the gunboats were carried in spite of their 
stubborn defenders ; but not till more than one 
barge had been sunk, while the assailants had lost 
a hundred men, and the assailed about half as 
many. 

' ' There was now nothing to hinder the land- 
ing of the troops; and as the scattered trans- 
ports arrived, the soldiers disembarked and fer- 
ried through the sluggish water of the bayous 
on small flat-bottomed craft ; and finally, Decem- 
ber 23d, the advance-guard, two thousand strong, 
under General Keane, emerged at the mouth of 
the canal Villere and camped on the bank of the 
river but nine miles below New Orleans, which 
now seemed a certain prize, almost within their 
grasp. 

' ' Yet, although a mighty and cruel foe was at 
their very gates, nothing save fierce defiance 
reigned in the fiery Creole hearts of the Crescent 



136 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

City, for a master spirit was in their midst. 
Andrew Jackson, having utterly broken and 
destroyed the most powerful Indian confederacy 
that had ever menaced the Southwest, and hav- 
ing driven the haughty Spaniards from Pensa- 
cola, was now bending all the energies of his 
rugged intellect and indomitable will to the one 
object of defending New Orleans. No man could 
have been better fitted for the task. He had 
hereditary wrongs to avenge on the British, and 
he hated them with an implacable fury that was 
absolutely devoid of fear. Born and brought 
up among the lawless characters of the frontier, 
and knowing well how to deal with them, he was 
able to establish and preserve the strictest martial 
law in the city without in the least quelling the 
spirit of the citizens. To a restless and untiring 
energy he united sleepless vigilance and unques- 
tioned military genius. Prompt to attack when- 
ever the chance offered itself, seizing with ready 
grasp the slightest vantage-ground, and never 
giving up a foot of earth that he could keep, he 
yet had the patience to play a defensive game 
when it suited him, and with consummate skill he 
always followed out the scheme of warfare that 
was best adapted to his wild soldiery. In after 



AS AN AUTHOR. 137 

years lie did to his country some good and more 
evil; but no true American can think of his 
deeds at New Orleans without profound and 
unmixed thankfulness. ' ' 

Mr. Roosevelt's description of the troops is 
not less vivid and characteristic than this of 
their chief. He says: "Jackson's forces were 
small. There were two war-vessels in the river. 
One was the little schooner Carolina, manned by 
regular seamen, largely New Englanders. The 
other was the newly built ship Louisiana, a pow- 
erful corvette ; she had no regular crew, and her 
officers were straining every nerve to get one 
from the varied ranks of the maritime popula- 
tion of New Orleans; long-limbed and hardy- 
visaged Yankees, Portuguese and Norwegian 
seamen from foreign merchantmen, dark-skinned 
Spaniards from the West Indies, swarthy 
Frenchmen who had served under the bold pri- 
vateersman Laffitte— all alike were taken, and 
all alike by unflagging exertions were got into 
shape for battle. There were two regiments of 
regulars, numbering about eight hundred men, 
my? and not very well disciplined, but who were 
drilled with great care and regularity. In addi- 
tion to this Jackson raised somewhat over a thou- 



# 



138 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

sand militiamen among the citizens. Tliere were 
some Americans among them, but they were 
mostly French Creoles, and one band had in its 
formation something that was curiously pathetic. 
It was composed of free men of color, who had 
gathered to defend the land which kept the men 
of their race in slavery ; who were to shed their 
blood for the flag that symbolized to their kind 
not freedom but bondage; who were to die 
bravely as freemen, only that their brethren 
might live on ignobly as slaves. Surely tliere was 
never a stranger instance than this of the irony 
of fate." 

It is curious to note that the author, who 
appreciated the tragedy in the act of these free 
negroes, fighting for the country that yet held 
their black brothers in bondage, was later to fight 
beside their descendants for the freedom of the 
Cubans. The fact that Mr. Roosevelt saw the 
pathos of the situation of the colored fighters at 
New Orleans throws a side-light on the tender- 
ness of the man's nature, a quality in his char- 
acter that has been lost sight of in his robust 
activity. That he has always believed in the 
right of all men to freedom is unquestioned, and 
that he has recognized as much as any other man 



AS AN AUTHOR. 139 

the true brotherhood of men is clear, but those 
unfamiliar with his private life and thougiit will 
find something new to admire in the man who was 
so ready to recognize at a glance an exhibition of 
nobility in the slave race of America at a time 
when a large portion of the population of the 
United States favored the extension of slavery, 
and the major portion of the remainder held no 
pronounced convictions either way. Mr. Roose- 
velt has lived in an era of great events, the great- 
est that have ever occurred during the life of one 
man. He has seen a nation lay down a million 
of lives and billions of treasure to establish the 
fact that the little handful of negroes under 
General Jackson had a right to bear arms under 
the stars and stripes; he has seen that nation 
send an unconquerable fleet and an army of its 
bravest soldiers against a foreign foe to perfect 
that principle in its establishment, and he has 
lived to take his place at the head of the nation 
which has had the spirit to make these sacri- 
fices. 

Mr. Roosevelt's power of graphic descrip- 
tion, as well as his wonderful insight into the 
character of men is further exemplified in this 
chapter. Continuing, he says : ' ' But if .Jackson 



140 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

had been forced to rely only on these troops, New 
Orleans could not have been saved. His chief 
hope lay in the volunteers of Tennessee, who, 
under their generals, Coffee and Carroll, were 
pushing their toilsome and weary way toward 
the city. Every effort was made to hurry their 
march through the almost impassable roads, and 
at last, in the very nick of time, on the 23d of 
December, the day on which the British troops 
reached the bank, the vanguard of the Tennes- 
seeans marched into New Orleans. Gaunt of 
form and grim of face ; with their powder-horns 
slung over their buckskin shirts ; carrying their 
long rifles on their shoulders and their hunting- 
knives stuck in their belts; with their coonskin 
caps and fringed leggings ; thus came the grizzly 
warriors of the backwoods, the heroes of the 
Horseshoe Bend, the victors over Spaniard and 
Indian, eager to pit themselves against the 
trained regulars of Britain, and to throw down 
the gage of battle to the world-renowned infantry 
of the island English. Accustomed to the most 
lawless freedom, and to giving free rein to the 
full violence of their passions, defiant of disci- 
pline and impatient of the slightest restraint, 
caring little for God and nothing for man, they 



AS AN AUTHOK. 141 

were soldiers who, under an ordinary com- 
mander, would have been fully as dangerous to 
themselves and their leaders as to their foes. But 
Andrew Jackson was of all men the one best 
fitted to manage such troops. Even their fierce 
natures quailed before the ungovernable fury of 
a spirit greater than their own ; and their sullen 
stubborn wills were bent at last before his 
unyielding temper and iron hand. Moreover, 
he was one of themselves ; he typified their pas- 
sions and prejudices, their faults and their vir- 
tues; he shared their hardships as if he had 
been a common private, and, in turn, he always 
made them partakers in his triumphs. They 
admired his personal prowess with the pistol and 
the rifle, his unswerving loyalty to his friends, 
and the relentless and unceasing war that he 
waged alike on the foes of himself and his coun- 
try. As a result they loved and feared him as 
few generals have ever been loved or feared; 
they obeyed him unhesitatingly; they followed 
his lead without flinching or murmuring, and 
they made good on the field of battle the promise 
their courage held out to his judgment." 

Mr. Roosevelt has here not only given an 
excellent example of his literary style at its best, 



142 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

but he has, in his estimate of Jacl^son, antici- 
pated a remarkably good drawing of himself and 
his ' ' Rough Riders. ' ' At twenty-three, writing 
of these fighting frontiersmen, he threw upon the 
canvas a picture that with very slight alterations 
might stand for an illustration of the First Regi- 
ment of United States Volunteers in the attack on 
Las Guasimas. The same qualities that gave 
General Jackson the loyal support of the lawless 
Tennesseeans made Roosevelt the idol of the 
daredevil spirits who crowded to the ranks of 
his unique regiment. He was a comrade to every 
one of them and took the hardships of the cam- 
paign with an uncomplaining good nature that 
was not outdone by the bravest and most patient 
man of command. He fought with them and 
with them shared the honors of victory. And in 
his story of "The Rough Riders" he has never 
intruded his own personality at the expense of 
any one else. This is also true of all his writ- 
ings that deal with his own experiences, espe- 
cially of his hunting books. The personal element 
is, of course, prevalent in them, but it is not 
obtrusive or out of i^erspective. There is no 
assumption of modesty in them, no affectation of 
indifference to the writer's own share in the expe- 



AS AN AUTHOE. 148 

riences and observations recorded. He is quite 
frankly and inevitably the chief actor in the tale, 
but not at all the hero. He takes his part with 
zest, and his personality lends a natural and con- 
stant charm to every adventure. But he is 
intensely interested in the game he pursues, in 
the country he hunts over, in his companions, in 
everything that presents itself to his eager and 
vigorous mind, to his keen and alert vision. 
''Had he done nothing," says one of his critics, 
''but write his fascinating hunting books, and 
lived through the experiences they relate in so 
simple and winning style, he would probably be 
more widely known in other lands than any other 
American save one or two." Had he not 
obscured his reputation as a historian by his 
industry in making history he would have a dis- 
tinct place in the circle of American writers in 
that field. It remains true, however, that if his 
life had been less full and active his literary work 
would in all probability have had less value, and 
the value would have been less peculiar. 

Mr. Roosevelt is most successful as a writer 
when the subject he has in hand most completely 
enlists his sympathies. His histories and biogra- 
phies are best and most interesting where they 



144 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

are the unconscious representation of the au- 
thor's mind and character. He has no patience 
with and little charity for weakness of any sort, 
and where the weakness shows in a prominent 
character he finds no excuse for it. Theorists are 
his abomination, and he does not stop to consider 
words when discussing them. Of President Jef- 
ferson he says : ' ' Though a man whose views and 
theories had a profound influence on our national 
life, he was perhaps the most incapable executive 
that ever filled the presidential chair; being 
almost purely visionary, he was utterly unable to 
grapple with the slightest actual danger, and, 
not even excepting his successor, Madison, it 
would be difficult to imagine a man less fit to 
guide the state with honor and safety through 
the stormy times that marked the opening of the 
present century." 

But in the open, dealing with wild and pictur- 
esque figures such as the early settlers of Amer- 
ica and their Indian foes who possessed the land 
before them, Mr. Roosevelt becomes an actor in 
the scenes he would describe, and develops sur- 
prising power as a writer of great force and 
clearness. In "The Winning of the West" he 
has contributed to literature four volumes of 



AS AN AUTHOR. 145 

great historical value. He feels the forces he 
describes; he has been in active alliance with 
them; he has known in personal intimacy the 
survivors and present representatives of the vic- 
tors in that mighty struggle, and the men who 
are developing what their ancestors won. His 
imagination is keen, his sympathies intense, his 
vision unclouded. There is a justness in his 
deductions that are often almost brutal in their 
plainness. "It was impossible," he declares, 
"long to keep peace on the border between the 
ever-encroaching whites and their fickle and 
bloodthirsty foes. The hard, reckless, often 
brutalized frontiersman, greedy of land and 
embittered by the memories of untold injuries, 
regarded all Indians with sullen enmity, and 
could not be persuaded to distinguish between 
the good and the bad. The central government 
was as powerless to restrain as to protect these 
far-off unruly citizens. ' ' 

Into this wilderness, where men were as 
pitiless as the elements, and as savage as the 
beasts that roamed the forests, Mr. Roosevelt 
takes his reader with a sweep of a great dram- 
atist and holds him fast with the graphic fervor 
of his recital. The vigorous personality of the 



146 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

writer gives to the work its greatest charm and 
most permanent value. 

As an essayist Mr. Roosevelt has the distin- 
guishing feature of coining phrases that once 
heard cannot be forgotten. These short, crisp 
sentences strike upon the ear like the report of a 
Gatling gun and force their way into the mind 
as the leaden missiles of that savage little fight- 
ing-machine force themselves into the body. In 
''The Strenuous Life" selections of this charac- 
ter may be taken at random. Here are a few of 
the most striking : 

*'A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace 
which springs merely from lack either of desire 
or of power to strive after great things, is as 
little worthy of a nation as of an individual. ' ' 

' ' Wisely used leisure merely means that those 
who possess it, being free from the necessity of 
working for their livelihood, are all the more 
bound to carry out some kind of non-remunera- 
tive work in science, in letters, in art, in explora- 
tion, in historical research— work of the type we 
most need in this country, the successful carrying 
out of which reflects most honor upon the 
nation. ' ' 



AS AN AUTHOR. 147 

' ' In the last analysis, a healthy state can only 
exist when the men and women who make it up 
lead clean, healthy, vigorous lives." 

"The man must be glad to do a man's work, 
to dare and to do and to labor ; to keep himself 
and to keep those dependent upon him. The 
woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of 
the home-maker, the wise and fearless mother 
of many healthy children. ' ' 

' ' When men fear work or fear righteous war, 
when women fear motherhood, they are on the 
brink of doom; and well.it is that they should 
vanish from the earth, where they are fit sub- 
jects for the scorn of all men and women who are 
themselves strong and brave and high-minded. ' ' 

' ' It is a base untruth to say that happy is the 
nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the 
nation that has a glorious history. Far better it 
is to dare mighty things, to win glorious tri- 
umphs, even though checkered by failure, than to 
take rank with those poor spirits who neither 
enjoy much nor suifer much, because they live in 
the gray twilight that knows not victory or 
defeat." 

"Thank God for the iron in the blood of our 



148 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lin- 
coln, and bore sword or rifle in the army of 
Grant!" 

"If we are to be a really great people, we 
must strive in good faith to play a great part in 
the world. We cannot avoid meeting great 
issues." 

' ' The timid man, the lazy man, the man who 
distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who 
has lost the great, fighting, masterful virtues, the 
ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose 
soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that 
thrills stern men with empires in their brains— 
all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation 
undertake its new duties." 

' ' Let us shrink from no strife, moral or phy- 
sical, within or without the nation, provided we 
are certain that the strife is justified, for it is 
only through strife, through hard and dangerous 
endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal 
of true national greatness." 

Few men have written more intimately, more 
poetically or more lovingly of nature in her vary- 
ing moods than Mr. Eoosevelt. There is a qual- 
ity of sympathetic expression in the following 
description of the heat of a day observed from 



AS AN AUTHOE. 149 

tlie veranda of a Western ranch house that is 
scarcely paralleled in the language : 

"In the hot, noon-tide hours of midsummer, 
the broad ranch veranda, always in the shade, 
is almost the only place where a man can be 
comfortable ; but here he can sit for hours at a 
time, leaning back in his rocking-chair, as he 
reads or smokes, or with half-closed, dreamy 
eyes gazes across the shallow, nearly dry, river 
bed to the wooded bottoms opposite, and to the 
plateaus lying back of them. Against the sheer 
white faces of the cliffs, that come down without 
a break, the dark green tree-tops stand out in 
bold relief. In the hot, lifeless air all objects 
that are not near by seem to sway and waver. 
There are few sounds to break the stillness. 
From the upper branches of the cottonwood trees 
overhead, whose shimmering, tremulous leaves 
are hardly ever quiet, but, if the wind stirs at all, 
rustle and quiver and sigh all day long, comes 
every now and then the soft, melancholy cooing 
of the mourning-dove, whose voice always seems 
far away and expresses more than any other 
sound in nature the sadness of gentle, hopeless, 
never-ending grief. The other birds are still and 
very few animals move about. Now and then 



150 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

the black sliadow of a wheeling vulture falls on 
the sun-scorched ground. The cattle, that have 
strung down in long files from the hills, lie 
quietly on the sand-bars, except that some of the 
bulls keep traveling up and down, bellowing and 
routing and giving vent to long, surly grum- 
blings as they paw the sand and toss it up with 
their horns. At times the horses, too, will come 
down to drink, and to splash and roll in the 
water. The prairie-dogs alone are not daunted 
by the heat, but sit at the mouths of their bur- 
rows with their usual pert curiosity. ' ' 

Mr. Eoosevelt published the ' ' Naval History 
of 1812" in 1882; ''Hunting Trips of a Ranch- 
man" in 1885; "Life of Thomas Benton" in 
1886; "Life of Gouverneur Morris" in 1887, 
both in the American Statesmen series ; ' ' Essays 
on Practical Politics ' ' and ' ' Ranch Life and the 
Hunting Trail" in 1888. The first two volumes 
of his important work, "The Winning of the 
West, ' ' were issued in 1889. In 1890 he wrote a 
"History of New York City" for the Historic 
Town series ; in 1893 ' ' The Wilderness Hunter, ' ' 
and the next year published the third volume of 
"The Winning of the West." In 1897 he col- 
lected a volume of his essays entitled ' ' American 



AS AN AUTHOB. 151 

Ideals," which he followed with ''The Rough 
Riders" in 1899, and ''Oliver Cromwell" and a 
volume of addresses entitled "The Strenuous 
Life" in 1890. He is also the author with Henry 
Cabot Lodge of "Hero Tales from American 
History," and he was one of the assistants of 
William Laird Cowles in the preparation ofl 
"The Royal Navy." 

All of Mr. Roosevelt's writings are forceful 
and to the purpose. His ideals are as high in the 
jungle as in the halls of justice. He discovers 
the virtues even of the beasts he hunts and the 
dogs that trail them. He is a naturalist that will 
take no man's word for truth until he has inves- 
tigated the subject for himself. He is a histo- 
rian who does not hesitate to contradict the 
statement of the best established authority once 
he has convinced himself that there is an error 
in the premise. He is an essayist who voices his 
own convictions irrespective of the effect the 
utterance will have on his own personal ambi- 
tions. He is a writer who would be dangerous 
were he less honest, and offensive were he not 
certain of his facts before he ventures to express 
an opinion. 

Mr. Roosevelt has never neglected to chroni- 



152 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

cle his experiences whenever those experiences 
have been of sufficient value to be of interest or 
use in the world. He has lived a life of wonder- 
ful activity and the world has the benefit of all 
he has learned— all he has enjoyed. His suffer- 
ings he has kept to himself. 






CHAPTER VIII. 

HOME LIFE AND EELIGIOUS TENDENCIES. 

ROMANCE OF HIS JPOYHOOD — IN THE HOME AND FAMILY — "ALL 
CHILDREN SHOULD HAVE JUST AS GOOD A TIME AS THEY 
POSSIBLY can" — HOLDING TO THE FAITH OF HIS FATHERS — 
AN AMERICAN CITIZEN CAN TAKE HIS BIBLE AND THE CON- 
STITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES INTO THE CAUCUS. 

In a famous sermon Henry Ward Beeclier 
once exclaimed : * ' Blessed is the man who has a 
grandfather!" The student who seeks for the 
underlying principle of Theodore Eoosevelt's 
home life must go back to his ancestry to secure 
it. He is no worshiper of name. Neither he nor 
Mr. Beecher could have had any patience with the 
profligate who would expect an honorable lin- 
eage to excuse a life of inaction or of evil. Yet 
both realized the value of a creditable ancestry. 
As a boy Theodore Roosevelt was the heir not 
only of wealth and social position, but of a long- 
established habit of good sense in the training of 
children. In looking at his home life it is well 
to remember that, while ever since the beginning 

153 



%. 



-x 



154 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

of the seventeenth century to the close of the 
nineteenth, the name has been honorably asso- 
ciated with history, no Roosevelt has in all that 
time disgraced the family, nor defied the laws of 
the State. There is something of value in such 
an ancestry as that; and in the sense that it 
tended to develop the best that was in the child 
one might well say it was fortunate to hiave ' ' had 
a grandfather." The sons of this family had 
always been taught the value of personal en- 
deavor. Idleness had not been permitted, because 
to permit it had been clearlj^ recognized as the 
greatest unkindness that could have been 
inflicted. But it was a reasonable and healthful 
industry that was enforced, for the effect was to 
cultivate a habit of and a love for diligence. 
The children did not need to be driven. Work 
was never made drudgery to them. And play was 
by no means discouraged. A very active interest 
in current affairs was cultivated ; and the result 
of it all has been that the Roosevelts were healthy 
and strong men, invariably devoted to home 
life, and always taking an active part in the 
affairs of the community. 

It was no wonder that such an ancestry 
should have produced an ideal home for this lad. 



HOME LIFE. 155 

It has been said that he was far from being 
robust in physical power, but that he gradually 
overcame this deficiency, so that at the time of 
entering Harvard College he gave good promise 
of fully equalling his classmates. Much of 
this betterment was due to his father's sensible 
rule of providing plenty of exercise. There was 
a country home at Oyster Bay (now the posses- 
sion of President Roosevelt) and there the chil- 
dren played through their vacations, getting the 
benefit of pure air, healthful food and abundant 
exercise. Elliott Roosevelt was the elder of the 
two brothers, and far the stronger in those dis- 
tant days of childhood. Both boys were venture- 
some, and found many an opportunity for testing 
courage and resource. The bay was before them, 
the woods behind. There were boats and horses, 
the pleasure of fishing and of hunting, and the 
daily opportunity for outdoor exercise which is 
so necessary to the proper development of a 
child. 

But there was another side of the home life 
that should not be overlooked. There was a per- 
fect understanding between the father and his 
children. The mother was no distant and unap- 
proachable being, but was their friend. There 



156 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

was no place in the world where they could have 
a better time than at home. The most perfect 
freedom was accorded them, and the hand which 
held them in check was so skilfully gloved with 
persuasion or was so diverting that they did not 
feel the restraint. The one thing they did feel 
from the beginning was that they must do right ; 
that boys must be brave, and that all must be 
truthful. They were no more models, perhaps, 
than other children trained in the same manner. 
But it is doubtful if any children ever grew up 
more thoroughly grounded in truthfulness, in 
fairness and honesty. 

There were books in plenty, and the habit of 
reading was cultivated. Both father and mother 
went with the children in their excursions in his- 
tory; joined them in the interesting study of 
birds and beasts ; so that a love for biography, 
and for the study of other nations and other 
times, and a keen appreciation of natural history, 
all became elements in the training of these chil- 
dren—in the home life of young Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

To it may be traced in large measure his own 
views on the proper treatment of children. In 
the course of a recent paper he has stated the 



HOME LIFE. 157 

essence of those views: ''All cliildren should 
have just as good a time as they possibly can." 
For he has seen the truth— that out of a happy 
and innocent boyhood a happy and useful man- 
hood is most likely to come. 

It has been said that young Theodore and 
little Edith Carow formed a childish attachment 
even in the days when they played about the trees 
and fountains of Union Square, and the reader 
has learned that Mr. Roosevelt later, while a stu- 
dent at Harvard, met Miss Alice Lee, a beautiful 
young woman of Boston. Their marriage fol- 
lowed closely upon his graduation, and they 
enjoyed a year of travel and reading in Europe. 
A daughter, Alice, was born to them, and the 
home life of this young man promised to be 
as happy and as nearly ideal as that of his 
fathers before him had been. But death took his 
wife in the summer of 1884 ; and shortly after- 
ward he suffered the loss of his mother. His 
father had died some years before. Thereafter 
for three years his home life was that of a man 
deprived of the joys to which husband and father 
is entitled, yet in all ways true to the ideals of 
manliness and integrity which had been set 
before him from the beginning. Little Alice was 



158 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

cared for in the home of her grandparents, in 
Boston, and Mr. Roosevelt turned from the fire- 
side that had been so large a part of his life, 
and went to the West. He hunted, rode horse- 
back, took an active interest in the moral and 
material building up of the new regions around 
the headwaters of the Missouri river, and he 
engaged in such reading and thought as were 
best calculated to broaden and fit him for greater 
duties when their day should come. 

Meantime Edith Kermit Carow had grown to 
womanhood, had graduated from the schools that 
were selected for her, and had traveled a great 
deal abroad. She was heard of now and then in 
Berlin, in Paris and in London, but spent the 
greater portion of each year at the home of her 
parents in New York. The childish romance in 
which her life and that of Theodore Roosevelt 
were formerly united had been laid away among 
those tender, clinging memories which a woman 
cherishes but does not discuss, and she had 
become a favorite in the very exclusive circles 
which she frequented. When the news of Mrs. 
Roosevelt's death was received there was no sin- 
cerer mourner than she. But two years later the 
old association was renewed, and the girl who 



HOME LIFE. 



159 



had played with Theodore Roosevelt in the shade 
of Union Square 's trees became his second wife. 

The personality of a wife is a subject that 
cannot be discussed recklessly. It is enough to 
say that Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt is modest and 
retiring, devoted to her husband, and almost 
wholly engrossed by the duties of her home. She 
who reigned as a belle through three successive 
seasons has become the ideal mother of five 
happy, healthy children, and is now a most gra- 
cious mistress of the White House— a charming 
''first lady of the land." She is accomplished, 
possessed of that gentle voice which is ''an 
excellent thing in woman," and far removed 
from the arrogance which in one weaker might go 
with so high a station. 

Nothing more complimentary can be said of 
her than that she is sensible ; nothing more hon- 
orable than that she is an ideal American mother, 
and nothing more convincing than that Alice 
Roosevelt, child of that first marriage, is fully 
and lovingly established as a daughter of this 
later home. 

With all the elements that go to make up the 
character of President Roosevelt, the religious 
tendencies should by no means be overlooked. 



160 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

He is a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, 
and has attended the services of that communion 
since he was a child. His parents must have 
accepted a broad and reasonable rendering of 
the precept which directed them to bring up their 
children "in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord, ' ' for this man who has met all problems of 
life with courage and decision, has measured 
his deeds by the standard of a practical and per- 
fect faith. The great tenets of the Christian 
religion are the tenets of his creed. He does no 
evil. He seeks that which is good. He renders 
unto every man the things that belong to that 
man— and he takes his own with an honesty 
which is not hypocritical enough to permit self- 
effacement. 

The church organization to which Mr. Roose- 
velt belongs has a very honorable history. Most 
of the people of Holland still adhere to it, and its 
devotees are found all over the world. In the 
United States they have establishments in every 
considerable city. The form of government is 
Presbyterian. Four hundred years ago the peo- 
ple of Holland wavered between the Lutheran 
and the Reformed churches. In 1571 they pub- 
licly professed their allegiance to the latter. As 



*{ 



HOME LIFE. 161 

long as they were under the sway of Spain they 
abstained from the use of the word '' reformed, " 
but when freedom had been achieved they made 
their choice, and set an example which was later 
expressed in America— the right to ''worship 
God according to the dictates of their own con- 
sciences. ' ' 

The life of Theodore Roosevelt brings much 
for the encouragement of the practical Christian. 
There is no cant in his composition. He belongs 
to the Church, and attends in observance upon 
its ordinances. He contributes to the support of 
that gospel which was the consolation of his 
ancestors, both in the fatherland and in this 
newer country which began almost with the 
establishment of the Roosevelt family. But, 
aside from this, the man's life has been an 
example of the living which those precepts en- 
join. Above all things, he is genuine and honest. 
He is as fearless as were the prophets of old, and 
as insistent on absolute justice between man and 
man as even the first of the Judges could have 
been. Being intensely practical, he holds that 
religion of little value which does not make men 
and women better ; which does not lead them into 
right lives, and keep them in happiness. 



162 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

In September, 1901, less than a week before 
that assassination of President McKinley wliicli 
for the third time in American history placed a 
Vice-President in the chief executive 's chair, Mr. 
Roosevelt was in Chicago and remained there 
over Sunday. Many demands were made upon 
his time. He was then Vice-President, and a fig- 
ure so commanding that influential men sought 
him continually. But in the early hours of that 
Sabbath day he disregarded social and political 
obligations, went to Trinity Reformed Church, 
on Marshfield avenue, and joined in the worship 
according to the familiar forms that had been a 
part of his life from the beginning. At the con- 
clusion of a short sermon the pastor invited him 
into the pulpit, and there he addressed the con- 
gregation. His militant Christianity was evi- 
denced in the very first words he uttered : * ' Be ye 
doers of the Word, and not hearers only." It 
was the message of a man who cares little for 
profession, but much for performance. It was 
the command uttered nineteen hundred years ago 
by One who condemned the boastful Pharisee, 
yet recognized the honest effort to do right when 
he uttered the exclamation: ''Well done, good 
and faithful servant." 



HOME LIFE. 163 

In that modest address, which has been styled 
a sermon, Mr. Roosevelt said: ''We must be 
doers— not hearers only. I am sure every one 
who tries to be a good Christian must feel a pecul- 
iar shame when he sees a hypocrite, or one who 
so conducts himself as to bring reproach upon 
Christianity. The man who observes all the 
ceremonials of the laws of the church but who 
does not carry them out in his daily life, is not 
a true Christian. To be doers of the Word it is 
necessary that we must be first hearers of the 
Word. Yet attendance at church is not enough. 
We must learn the lessons. We must study the 
Bible, but we must not let it end there. We must 
apply it in active life. The first duty of a man is 
to his own house. The necessity of heroic action 
on a great scale arises but seldom, but the hum- 
drum of life is with us every day. 

''In business and in work, if you let Chris- 
tianity stop as you go out of the church door, 
there is little righteousness in you. You must 
behave to your fellowmen as you would have 
them behave to you. You must have pride in 
your work if you would succeed. A man should 
get justice for himself, but he should also do 
justice to others. Help a man to help himself. 



164 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

but do not expend all your efforts in helping a 
man wlio will not help himself. ' ' 

Later in the day he spoke to the Gideon Band 
as follows : * * The Christianity that counts is the 
kind that is carried into a man's life. The man 
who does ordinary work well is working for the 
Lord. I do not like to see a slack man. If a man 
is slack in his business relations, you cannot 
draw upon him heavily in spiritual matters. 
Doubtless you remember the line in Milton where 
he speaks of the * cloister virtue, ' and later com- 
pares it with ' robust virtue. ' That is what you 
men are teaching by precept and example. You 
are showing how a Christian life can be led in an 
active life. If you do not find in a man any 
outward manifestations of the Spirit, I am in- 
clined to doubt if it ever has been in him. I like 
to see fruits; and I am glad that you are pro- 
ducing them. ' ' 

It would be difficult to find a more accurate 
index of the man's character. Throughout his 
life he has been exemplifying the very principles 
which he presented to his hearers from the pulpit 
on those two occasions. When he took part in 
the preliminary political meetings in the Murray 
Hill district, before his first election to the legis- 



HOME LIFE. 165 

lature, lie simply put into actual practice wliat 
all the others would have cheerfully conceded as 
a theory. They understood that the government 
under which they lived was a republic, and that 
every citizen had a right to an equal share in 
its control. They would have admitted that they 
had no right to deny the franchise to any Amer- 
ican ; yet they had been denying an equal share 
to some fellow-citizens, and had no thought of 
discontinuing the practice. They had been deny- 
ing the franchise to Americans wherever they 
dared and whenever the exigencies of their party 
made it desirable. And they had been extending 
to other Americans who were of their own way 
of thinking vastly more than the power of a sin- 
gle freeman. Furthermore, if any one had asked 
them to subscribe to the Golden Rule just before 
their entrance to the caucus, they would cheer- 
fully have done so, and dismissed the matter as 
conceded, but of moment too small for considera- 
tion. 

Yet this man, Theodore Roosevelt, came to his 
political life with all the ingenuousness of a relig- 
ious neophyte, and all the enthusiasm of a 
patriot. His religion was of very little use to 
Mm if it could not be taken into his politics. His 



166 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

political creed was a mockery if it did not square 
itself by liis religion. Fortunately lie convinced 
all those who cared to be convinced that the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, the Golden Kule and the Con- 
stitution of the United States were all legitimate 
guides for the politician. He overthrew the 
machine, but he took no more than was his right 
as a citizen, no more than, as a Christian, it was 
his duty to take. 

When he reached the halls of legislation at 
Albany he found a thoroughly established doc- 
trine that the Bible and the Bill of Rights were 
to be left in the anteroom. He found that cor- 
ruption had come to be recognized as a necessary 
factor in the securing of even wise and needed 
legislation. Before he left the State capital he 
had established the principle that an honest man 
who has the courage of his convictions and the 
strength that should crown an American legisla- 
tor can secure the passage of laws without the 
use of bribery, and defeat bad measures without 
employing violence. 

When he assailed the spoils system he needed 
but the simple doctrines that he had learned from 
the New Testament and the catechism. Those to 
whom he talked confessed without reserve that 



HOME LIFE. 



167 



their policy and their practice were not in con- 
formity with the doctrines of the Christian relig- 
ion ; and that, reduced to the last analysis, they 
were politically as well as religiously wrong. In 
their defense they may have insisted that practi- 
cal government made it necessary to do some 
things which an exact construction of law and 
gospel would forbid; but he taught them that 
better government could be secured without 
wrong-doing; that every end toward which 
statesmen might justly strive was attainable 
along the paths of honesty, fidelity and truth. He 
had no use for principles which would not admit 
of realization in practice, and no faith in a prac- 
tice which was not supported by manly and 
Christian principles. 

In one of his essays he has declared that the 
two commandments that were particularly appli- 
cable in American public life were the eighth 
and the ninth: *'Thou shalt not steal," and 
* * Thou shalt not bear false witness. ' ' To take a 
thing which did not belong to him he regarded 
as stealing ; and the fact that he was an elected 
official did not absolve him. The doctrine was a 
new one to the men whom he encountered in his 
earlier activity in public affairs. When he had 



168 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

taught his associates a more stern and righteous 
code of morals, he had occasion to repel their 
charges of insincerity by telling them they should 
not violate the ninth commandment. 

It must not be understood that Mr. Roosevelt 
was so strict a constructionist as to preclude the 
possibility of his securing practical results. 
Sometimes he found the best— the absolute right 
—not at the hour attainable ; and he had as little 
patience with that band of irreconcilables who 
would have nothing unless they could have all, 
as he had for the graceless scamp who took with- 
out regard to title. *'The weakling and the 
coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but 
without honesty the brave and able man is simply 
a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by 
every lover of righteousness.'* He says in 
another place: *'We need absolute honesty in 
public life; and we shall not get it until we 
remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand 
with it, and that it is quite as important not to 
tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell 
the truth about one who is not decent. ' ' 

Yet, speaking of the extremists who would 
reject every tender of partial betterment as ''a 
compromise with the Devil, a covenant with 




MR. ROOSEVELT AT HOME 



HOME LIFE. 



169 



Hell," he has said: ''They are morally worse 
instead of better than the moderates. Under very 
rare conditions their attitude may be right ; and 
because it is thus right once in a hundred times 
they are apt to be blind to the hann they do in 
the other ninety-nine cases. These men need to 
realize above all things that healthy growth can- 
not come through revolution. Hysteria in any 
form is incompatible with sane and healthy 
endeavor. ' ' 

There is no concession to wrong in this. It is 
simply the wisdom of a man who understands 
the world, and who knows that miracles have 
ceased. As even the Creator allots a hundred 
years to the maturity of an oak, so that man who 
would build higher the temple of his country's 
liberties must move by degrees; he must take 
advantage of available blessings, and gather the 
strength to be obtained from combat with foes. 

The religious life and example of Mr. Roose- 
velt seem above all things to be of that reason- 
able sort which makes men better ; which tends 
to a higher type of statesmanship ; which encour- 
ages a better officialdom ; which makes American 
citizenship and Christian citizenship more nearly 
convertible terms. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CRUSADE FOR THE MERIT SYSTEM. 

ROOSEVELT'S WORK IN THE NEW YORK LEGISLATURE BEARS 
FRUIT— APPOINTED CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER BY PRESI- 
DENT HARRISON — SHOWS GREAT PREPARATION FOR THE 
WORK— OFFENDS SPOILSMEN OF BOTH PARTIES— ABLY SUP- 
PORTED IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE. 

For several years after his defeat for the 
office of mayor of New York Mr. Roosevelt took 
no prominent part in politics. Not that he ever 
lost interest in the legislation of his city, State or 
country. His nature and education prohibited 
such a course. A man who should neglect to 
perform the duties of citizenship from any cause 
he held in less esteem even than the man who 
made a business of politics for the advancement 
of his own personal ends. There is no mistaking 
his utterances on this point. * ' It is unfortunately 
true," he declares, ''especially throughout New 
England and the Middle States, that the general 
tendency among people of culture and high edu- 
cation has been to neglect and even to look down 

m 



THE MEKIT SYSTEM. 171 

Upon the rougher and manlier virtues, so that an 
advanced state of intellectual development is too 
often associated with a certain effeminacy of 
character. Our more intellectual men often 
shrink from the raw coarseness and the eager 
struggle of political life as if they were women. 
Now, however refined and virtuous a man may 
be, he is yet entirely out of place in the Ameri- 
can body politic unless he is himself of suffi- 
ciently coarse fiber and virile character to be 
more angered than hurt by an insult or injury ; 
the timid good form a most useless as well as a 
most despicable portion of the community." 

It is impossible to conceive that a man hold- 
ing such sentiments would retire without good 
reason, even for a brief time, from the field in a 
war he had himself been largely instrumental in 
bringing about. And so we may well conclude 
that the period between 1886, when he made the 
mayoralty race, and 1889, when he was appointed 
by President Harrison a member of the Civil 
Service Commission, was employed by Mr. 
Roosevelt in the preparation of a plan that should 
put him on a fighting basis with those to whose 
methods he was unalterably opposed. 

The physical life of Mr. Roosevelt during- 



172 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

tliose three years is a familiar story. Much of 
the time was spent on his ranch in the Bad Lands, 
where he rode, and hunted, and wrote graphic 
tales of his adventures— books on hunting, books 
on Western life, and books on Eastern cities. 
His literary style was both vigorous and pleas- 
ing. His books sold well and the magazines made 
great demand for his writings. The public liked 
his breeziness, his evident sincerity, his courage, 
and began to get an understanding of the man. 
But Mr. Roosevelt had other things in mind 
than any of these with which the country is 
familiar. His service in the assembly had shown 
him the seamy side of politics. He had discov- 
ered that the people, careless on the one hand of 
their duties, and, on the other, too deeply 
immersed in trade, or too busy in a struggle for 
existence to guard their rights, were being swin- 
dled and robbed by the very men they had chosen 
to protect them. He saw their need of a cham- 
pion who was not only strong, resolute and brave, 
but who was also honest, able and a patriot. 
Such a champion he determined to be, but the 
high purpose of his soul he concealed from every 
one. In solitude and alone the prophets of old 
had found wisdom. What three years in the 



THE MERIT SYSTEM. 173 

wilderness did for Mr. Roosevelt is shown in his 
acts immediately following his return. He had 
gone away a young man full of enthusiasm for 
good government, strong in his convictions for 
right and justice, fearless and ready in combat, 
but with few weapons and no armor; a chival- 
rous knight, it is true, but a knight with bare 
hands and uncovered head, who was forced to 
storm a castle skilfully built for defence and 
occupied by a host of trained and cunning sol- 
diers, serving under able, if unscrupulous gen- 
erals. He came back with no lower ideals, with 
enthusiasm unabated, with the same deep-seated 
hatred of sham and hypocrisy, the same contempt 
for weakness and cowardice, but with a greatly 
broadened mind, extended wisdom, and with a 
knowledge of men that was at once sword, shield 
and castle. Hard study had fortified him with 
the fundamental facts of all government, and 
days and nights of contemplation in the deep 
forest and on the broad prairies had given him a 
vision as clear and rare as the air of the moun- 
tain peaks. He went away the colonel of a regi- 
ment of patriotic recruits; he came back the 
general of a trained army. Impetuosity had 
given place to strenuous purpose, and his adver- 



174 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

saries soon learned that tliey were now forced to 
fight a man as skilful as themselves in all the arts 
of war or diplomacy, who lacked neither mental 
nor physical courage, and who, moreover, had 
truth on his side. 

How fierce and constant that battle was can 
best be judged by Mr. Roosevelt's three capital 
essays, *' Machine Politics in New York City," 
''Six Years of Civil Service Reform," and 
''Administering the New York Police Force." 
Even these give but a faint idea of the work done 
by Mr. Roosevelt and his colleagues in their 
efforts to make effective the laws looking toward 
purity in politics and in getting new legislation 
to assist in extending and completing the work. 

Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward civil service 
and the urgent need of it is succinctly set forth in 
the opening of his essay on that subject. "No 
question of internal adminstration ' ' he declares, 
"is so important to the United States as the 
question of Civil Service reform, because the 
spoils system, which can be supplanted only 
through the agencies which have found expres- 
sion in the act creating the Civil Service Com- 
mission, has been for seventy years the most 
potent of all the forces tending to bring about the 



THE MERIT SYSTEM. 175 

degradation of our politics. No republic can 
permanently endure when its politics are corrupt 
and base ; and the spoils system, the application 
in political life of the degrading doctrine that to 
the victor belong the spoils, produces corruption 
and degradation. The man who is in politics for 
the offices might just as well be in politics for 
the money he can get for his vote, so far as the 
general good is concerned. . . . The worst 
enemies of the republic are the demagogue and 
the corruptionist. The spoils-monger and the 
spoils-seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker 
and the bribe-giver, the embezzler of public 
funds and the corrupter of voters. Civil Service 
refonn is not merely a movement to better the 
public service. It achieves this end too; but 
its main purpose is to raise the tone of public 
life, and it is in this direction that its effects have 
been of incalculable good to the whole commu- 
nity." 

Mr. Roosevelt in this essay goes on to show 
exactly what was done during the six years he 
served as a member of the board, both to ad- 
vance the law and to hinder its advancement, 
and who were the more prominent among its 
friends and foes. It is a paper well worth the 



176 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

study of any one desirous of knowing how the 
few really honest and capable men in the public 
service must fight to keep the spoilsmen from 
overrunning the rightful possessions of the gen- 
eral public, and carrying off its substance to be 
divided among the successful marauders. Here, 
as in all his chronicles of events in which he has 
taken active part, Mr. Roosevelt is quick to bring 
forward those who have been active and resolute 
in the cause. 

When Mr. Roosevelt took office on the Com- 
mission the only commissioner was Charles 
Lyman, of Connecticut, with whom he served 
until he resigned in May, 1895, to accept the 
position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 
Hugh S. Thompson, ex-governor of South Caro- 
lina, was made commissioner at the same time 
with Mr. Roosevelt and served three years, when 
he resigned, and was succeeded by George D. 
Johnson, of Louisiana, who was removed by the 
President in November, 1893, being replaced by 
John R. Proctor, the former State geologist of 
Kentucky. Mr. Roosevelt declares that the 
Commission never varied a hand 's breadth from 
its course throughout the six years of his service, 
and that Messrs. Thompson, Proctor, Lyman 



THE MERIT SYSTEM. 177 

and himself were always a unit on all important 
questions of policy and principle. ''Our aim," 
he says, ' ' was always to procure the extension of 
the classified service as rapidly as possible, and 
to see that the law was administered thoroughly 
and fairly. ' ' 

It was this harmony of purpose in the Com- 
mission that made it possible for it to accomplish 
such a vast amount of work and place the Civil 
Service on such a firm basis that it can hardly 
be dislodged without an upheaval in the Govern- 
ment itself. 

Mr. Roosevelt was one of the most noted 
advocates of the merit system, and his enmity to 
the spoilsmen had won him the objurgations of 
press and party on numberless occasions. He 
brought to the discharge of his new duties all 
the energy exhibited in his legislative career, 
coupled with the wiser understanding gained by 
three years of close application to the study of 
the subject. His experience as an assemblyman 
had taught him that he would find sturdy oppo- 
sition to his plans for reform as much within 
his party as out of it. But he had an enthusiastic 
faith in the righteousness and the expediency of 
the Civil Service system. 



178 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

His first entrance into politics was marked by- 
fearless independence. He refused to affiliate 
with rings or cliques. As lie had begun so he 
continued, and for the first time since it had 
become a law Civil Service became a fact. 

Mr. Roosevelt not only believed in Civil Ser- 
vice as a theory but was determined that it should 
become a part of the very fiber of the Govern- 
ment. He had introduced the first intelligently 
drawn Civil Service bill ever presented in the 
New York legislature. By an odd coincidence 
this was signed by Grover Cleveland at nearly 
the same time in 1883 that the Civil Service 
reform measure drafted by Dorman B. Eaton, 
and championed by Senator George H. Pendle- 
ton, passed the Republican Congress at Wash- 
ington, and received the signature of President 
Arthur. Now by another strange conjunction of 
circumstances the author of the New York law 
was put in a position where the power to enforce 
the national measure was largely in his hands. 

To any one less sturdy and persistent than 
Mr. Roosevelt the task would have been appall- 
ing. Many of the Republican and Democratic 
politicians were opposed to the Civil Service act. 
Many members of Congress of both parties who 



THE MEEIT SYSTEM. 179 

voted for it did so on account of the tremendous 
popular pressure for its enactment which the 
assassination of President Garfield by a de- 
mented office-seeker two years earlier excited. 
These Congressmen would have been glad to see 
the act die of inanition, as the one signed by 
Grant in 1873 had died, through the refusal of 
Congress to make an appropriation in 1874 for 
its continuance. Few men in either party would 
have gone out of their way to advocate a contin- 
uance of the measure, much less to demand a 
rigid enforcement of its enactments ; numbers of 
them were ready to fight it on every possible 
occasion and with all the weapons in the hands of 
party organization. 

But these difficulties that would have over- 
whelmed a less aggressive man only stimulated 
the zest of Mr. Roosevelt, and he entered upon 
the duties of his office with an energy that 
startled both houses of Congress and made Civil 
Service reform the topic of fierce discussion all 
over the land. Every evasion of the law that 
came to the notice of the Commission was prose- 
cuted with a vigor that had a wholesome effect on 
the heads of bureaus and departments, and gave 
a security to Government employes they had 



180 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

never before known. * ' The widest publicity was 
given to wrong-doing," says Mr. Roosevelt. 
"Often, even where we were unable to win the 
actual fight in which we were engaged, the fact 
of our having made it, and the further fact that 
we were ready to repeat it on provocation, has 
put a complete stop to the repetition of the 
offense. As a consequence, while there have been 
plenty of violations and evasions of the law, yet 
their proportion was really very small, taking 
into account the extent of the service. In the 
aggregate it is doubtful if one per cent, of all 
the employes have been dismissed for political 
reasons. In other words, where, under the spoils 
system, a hundred men would have been turned 
out, under the Civil Service law, as administered 
under our supervision, ninety-nine men were 
kept in. ' ' 

In his fight for the extension of the merit 
system Mr. Roosevelt displayed a generalship 
that demonstrated his ability to lead among the 
very best men of the country. He was no sooner 
installed in "Washington than he sought the sup- 
port of such men as Congressman (afterward 
Senator) Lodge of Massachusetts, Messrs. Reed, 
of Maine, and McKinley (afterward President) 



THE MERIT SYSTEM. 181 

of Ohio, among the Republicans, and Messrs. 
Wilson, of West Virginia, and Sayers, of Texas, 
among the Democrats. Among others whom Mr. 
Roosevelt mentions as having been active cham- 
pions of the law in the lower house were Messrs. 
Hopkins and Butterworth of Illinois, Mr. Green- 
halge of Massachusetts, Mr. Henderson of Iowa, 
Messrs. Payne, Tracy and Coombs of New York. 
Among its chief opponents were Messrs. Spinola 
of New York, Enloe of Tennessee, Stockdale of 
Mississippi, Grosvenor of Ohio, and Bowers of 
California. In the Senate Hoar of Massachu- 
setts, Allison of Iowa, Hawley of Connecticut, 
Wolcott of Colorado, Perkins of California, 
Cockrell of Missouri, and Butler of South Caro- 
lina always supported the Commission against 
unjust attack. Senator Gorman was the chief 
leader of the assaults upon the Commission, 
Senators Harris, Plumb, Stewart and Ingalls be- 
ing his allies. 

Mr. Roosevelt was so active and impartial in 
his enforcement of the law that when President 
Cleveland, in 1893, succeeded President Harri- 
son, he asked Mr. Roosevelt to remain in office, 
and so for two years more, under a Democratic 
President, he carried on the work of prosecuting 



182 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

offenders against the Civil Sersrice law. In his 
six years' service he added twenty thousand 
posts to the lists under the scope of the merit 
system, or more than were placed on that roll in 
an equal length of time before or since. 

Mr. Roosevelt had thus proved that Civil 
Service, honestly administered, was of practical 
value. Indeed, he goes so far as to say there is in 
American life no other cause so fruitful of harm 
to the body politic as the spoils system. He does 
not believe that competitive examinations in all 
cases result in securing the best men. Indeed, 
such examinations, shrewdly manipulated, may 
easily defeat the end aimed at. But if there is 
an honest desire on the part of the authorities to 
secure good results there is no doubt that the 
public service may be steadily raised to a higher 
state of efficiency. 

Mr. Roosevelt resigned as Civil Service Com- 
missioner May 5, 1895, and was appointed Police 
Commissioner of New York city May 24 follow- 
ing. 



CHAPTER X. 

PURIFYING CITY POLITICS. 

KOOSEVELT APPOINTED PREPIDENT OF POLICE BOARD OF THE CITY 
OF NEW YORK-" I WILL ENFORCE THE LAW "-MERIT SYSTEM 
GOVERNS IN POLICE FORCE — SUNDAY CLOSING LAW MADE 
OPERATIVE — ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION BY DYNAMITE. 

The appointment of Mr. Roosevelt by Mayor 
Strong to the presidency of the Police Commis- 
sion aroused a storm of protests from the corrupt 
politicians who had now come to fear and hate 
him with a bitterness born of repeated exposures 
and defeats at his hands. He had introduced 
into politics a new element, with which the men 
who controlled the machines were not at all 
familiar, and they resented it as a tiger resents 
the appearance of a higher vertebrate animal in 
the jungle where heretofore he has held undis- 
puted sway. That a man might be honest in 
office, so far as his personal affairs were con- 
cerned, they could well believe. Indeed, it was 
necessary for the success of the machine that 
there should be such men in office. They were 



183 



184 THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 

the leaven for the loaf of elections ; the ' ' honor- 
able men" with which to fill the platforms at pub- 
lic meetings, whose names might head the lists 
of representatives of the party in the public 
prints. Good men were as necessary to the 
machine as bad men. But their goodness must 
be negative ; a goodness that did not extend far 
beyond itself and was satisfied and complacent 
in the contemplation of its own virtues. But 
jDositive goodness was another matter, dangerous, 
destructive and not to be entertained. 

Mr. Roosevelt, not being a negative, but a 
radically positive character, they found no place 
for him in their combinations. He would not 
have peace on any terms short of absolute hon- 
esty and efficiency. He had been offensive 
enough to the spoilsmen while he was in Wash- 
ington, fighting day and night for the enforce- 
ment of the National Civil Service Law. To 
have him at the head of the Police Board of the 
city of New York meant war on corruption and 
no quarter. It was not to be borne. He must 
be crushed at the outset. After all, it was only 
one man against ten thousand, and the thousands 
had this one in their territory. 

This was the feeling of the machine politi- 



CITY POLITICS. 185 

cians in New York when, on May 5, 1895, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt accepted the presidency of the 
newly appointed Police Board, with the under- 
standing that the duty of that board was to cut 
out the chief source of civic corruption in the city 
by cleansing the police department. At the city 
election the previous fall William S. Strong had 
been elected Mayor on an anti-Tammany plat- 
form, by a coalition composed partly of the 
regular Republicans, partly of anti-Tammany 
Democrats, and partly of independents. The 
business depression throughout the country in 
1893, which resulted in a general suspension of 
industries, followed by idleness and vagrancy, 
had caused a political reaction against the Demo- 
cratic party, which was then in power, and this 
feeling no doubt contributed more or less to the 
success of the reform ticket ; but it is doubtful if 
the result would have been materially changed 
had the National Democratic party still held 
favor with the people. Crime and lawlessness 
had grown to such enormous proportions under 
the protection of the dominant party in New 
York that even the dullest and most careless 
citizen felt the gravity of the situation. Corrup- 
tion had honeycombed every department of the 



186 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

city government, and inefficiency, dishonesty and 
rottenness were everywhere in evidence. Espe- 
cially was this true of the police force. This 
department had been so long under the absolute 
direction of the Tammany leaders, and stood in 
such close connection both with that organization 
and the people, that it had become the actual hand 
gathering from the criminal and depraved classes 
an immunity tax to pass it on to the men who held 
sway over the politics of the city. A portion of 
this money naturally stuck to the fingers of the 
transferring hand, but the bulk of the vast sum 
collected from those engaged in unlawful enter- 
prises found its way into the chests of the 
''machine." 

It must not be understood that Tammany 
was doing anything but what the opposing polit- 
ical machine would have, done had it succeeded 
in getting such a perfect organization. There 
had been a time when the great Republican 
leaders had hoped to have this same settled 
advantage. They had been led by no less bril- 
liant a man than Senator Conklin, and no less 
shrewd a politician than Senator Piatt. But the 
rank and file of the two parties differed some- 
what in character, differed just enough to make 



CITY POLITICS. 187 

it impossible for the Republicans to hold their 
forces solid, whatever the issue. The influential 
leaders of the independent movements had gen- 
erally been drawn from the Republican forces, 
and the machine of that party had been so often 
crippled by defections that it was no match for 
the closely knit and solidly constructed machine 
of its elder opponent. And so New York city 
had fallen completely under the domination of 
Richard Croker and his lieutenants. 

Mr. Roosevelt says of the conditions existing 
at the time : ' ' No man not intimately acquainted 
with both the lower and humbler sides of New 
York life— for there is a wide distinction between 
the two— can realize how far the corruption, 
brought about by these conditions, extended. It 
would be difficult to overestimate the utter rot- 
tenness of many branches of the city adminis- 
tration, but the chief center of it was in the Police 
Department. Except in rare instances, where 
prominent politicians made demands which could 
not be refused, both promotions and appoint- 
ments toward the close of Tammany rule were 
made almost solely for money, and the prices 
were discussed with cynical frankness. ' ' 

[Writers other than Mr. Roosevelt inform us 



188 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

that at this time in New York it was utterly 
impossible for a man to secure a position on the 
police force of New York city without payment 
of a set price, arranged and scheduled with 
reference solely to its chances for blackmail. 
This tariff of charges ranged from two to three 
hundred dollars for appointment as a patrolman, 
to twelve or fifteen thousand dollars for promo- 
tion to the position of captain. 

Men who paid thus liberally for their appoint- 
ments did so with the assurance, if not openly 
then implied, that they would not be censured for 
pursuing any scheme that would bring them a 
good profit on the investment, so long as they 
were fair in the division of the spoils. There 
was but one way, besides that of open robbery, 
by which they could reimburse themselves for 
the original outlay and profit by the arrange- 
ment, and that was by blackmail. But those 
who were at all familiar with the situation did 
not hesitate to take the chances. The system of 
* ' collections ' ' was so elaborate and complete that 
the chances for loss were small and the promise 
of big returns was bright. 

Every one at all familiar with the duties of an 
officer of police can readily understand how 



CITY POLITICS. 189 

easily he miglit play the part of a robber with 
immense success, if he was confident the com- 
plaints that might be lodged against him would 
be either disregarded or pigeon-holed. Confident 
in his position he could levy tribute alike on the 
innocent and guilty. Even the law was in his 
favor, and the more sumptuary the laws the 
better his chance for plunder. If a saloon- 
keeper had a desire to conduct his business within 
the law, so as to be beyond the power of the black- 
mailing patrolman, his competitor at hand, who 
contributed to the corrupt fund, was allowed such 
liberal license that the man who would have 
obeyed the law was either forced out of business 
or compelled to adopt the dishonest practices of 
his neighbors. 

That this picture is not overdrawn may be 
gathered from statements of Mr. Roosevelt liim- 
self, made in his essay on ''The New York 
Police," printed in the Atlantic Monthly for 
September, 1897. He avers that the system of 
blackmail had honeycombed every department 
of the city government; that while the money 
was collected from many different sources, 
chiefly from the gamblers, liquor-sellers, and the 
keepers of disorderly houses, yet "every form 



190 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

of vice and crime contributed more or less, and 
a great many respectable people who were igno- 
rant or timid, were blackmailed under pretense 
of forbidding or allowing them to violate obscure 
ordinances and the like. ' ' 

Into this maelstrom of crime and corruption 
Mr. Roosevelt charged as fearlessly as he after- 
ward charged at the head of his Rough Riders 
up San Juan Hill. There was no halting for 
consultation about the methods to be pursued 
in either case. Time would not admit of it. 
The enemy was there before him and must be 
routed. ''In administering the affairs of the 
police force we found, ' ' he says, ' ' as might have 
been expected, that there was no need of genius, 
nor indeed of any very unusual qualities. What 
was needed was exercise of the plain, ordinary 
virtues, of a rather commonplace type, which all 
good citizens should be expected to possess. 
Common sense, common honestj^, courage, en- 
ergy, resolution, readiness to learn and a desire 
to be as pleasant with everybody as was com- 
patible with a strict performing of duty— these 
were the qualities most called for." This cata- 
logue of ''ordinary virtues" may well be conned 
by any one anxious to get a clear understanding 



CITY POLITICS. 191 

of the character of Mr. Roosevelt and the causes 
that have led to his remarkable success. No one 
of them but he has kept constantly alive through- 
out all his active life and upon them he has 
builded solidly and well. Standing upon this 
foundation he has reached sublime heights at 
an age when most men are satisfied to see the 
first dawn of permanent establishment. 

In the exercise of his duties as president of 
the Police Board Mr. Roosevelt hastens to say 
that in spite of the wide-spread corruption which 
had obtained in the New York police department, 
the bulk of the men were heartily desirous of 
being honest. It was not the depravity of human 
nature that had brought about a state of affairs 
in the principal city of the republic worse in 
many ways than any that ever existed under an 
effete monarchy. It was the mildew blight of 
political ' ' bossism ' ' reduced to a science. Every 
man on the force was a cog in a great Juggernaut 
that was rolling over the body of Independence 
and crushing all uprightness out of its life. It 
needed only to go on unchecked for a few more 
years to complete its work of national debase- 
ment. Every liberty-loving citizen may be 
thankful that in such a crucial time in the affairs 



192 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

of his country a man was at hand who not only 
foresaw the results of the continuance of such a 
policy, but was brave enough to attack, and 
strong enough to overthrow it. 

Associated with Mr. Roosevelt on the board, 
as treasurer, was Mr. Avery D. Andrews. He 
was a Democrat, while Mr. Roosevelt was a 
Republican, but both men were big enough to put 
in the background all questions of national poli- 
tics, on which they widely differed, and enter 
upon the work of reorganizing the police force 
independently of all party bias. Had the ques- 
tion of party policy been allowed to influence 
them in one single instance the work they did 
could never have been done. At least they would 
have failed in doing it. "We understood from 
the start," says Mr. Roosevelt, "that the ques- 
tion of party could not enter into the adminis- 
tration of the New York police, if that adminis- 
tration was to be both honest and efficient ; and 
as a matter of fact, during my two years ' service, 
Mr. Andrews and I worked in absolute harmony 
on every important question of policy which 
arose. The prevention of blaclmiail and corrup- 
tion, the repression of .crime and violence, safe- 
guarding of life and property, securing honest 



CITY POLITICS. 



193 



elections, and rewarding efficient and punishing 
inefficient police service, are not, and cannot 
properly be made, questions of party difference." 
Mr. Roosevelt here shows how well he has 
considered the question of party fealty, and how 
naturally he has settled that question in his 
mind. If, as is here suggested, the police force 
of every city could be entirely released from the 
influence of all political parties it would speedily 
become a protection to the people, instead of 
being a menace, as is generally tlie case in the 
larger American cities. 

The first thing Mr. Roosevelt did after enter- 
ing upon his duties was to acquaint himself with 
the manner in which the officers of the force car- 
ried on their work, both good and bad. This he 
did by making nightly rounds in the different 
parts of the city, traveling quietly and unknown. 
In these investigations he was often accompanied 
by Jacob A. Riis, the author of ''How the Other 
Half Lives," a most careful and painstaking stu- 
dent of social questions. 

' ' There were many men who helped us in our 
work," Mr. Roosevelt has often said, "but among 
them all the man who helped us most, by advice 
and counsel, by stalwart, loyal friendship, and 



194 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

by ardent championsliip of all that was good 
against all that was evil, was Jacob A. Riis." 
Those who have followed the writings of Mr. 
Riis with sufficient interest to recognize how 
deeply he feels the sorrows and wrongs of 
humanity and how thoroughly he has familiar- 
ized himself with the lives of the less fortunate 
and unsuccessful of the great cities, will be glad 
that Mr. Roosevelt is possessed of that trait of 
fairness that prompts him always to give full 
credit to every one who is associated with him 
in any enterprise, whether it be the killing of a 
cougar, or the taking of a city. It is this charac- 
teristic that has enabled him to keep his hold on 
the hearts of the people without resorting to any 
of those common tricks of oratory, or descending 
to the level of fulsome flattery. Neither in his 
writings nor his speeches has Mr. Roosevelt ever 
missed an opportunity to declare the truth as he 
saw it, no matter whom it helped or hurt. 

This was the spirit that actuated him 
throughout all the bitter fight that followed his 
attack on the corrupt methods of the New York 
police. Once he had familiarized himself suffi- 
ciently with the situation to be sure of his ground 
he struck, and struck hard. During his nightly 



CITY POLITICS. 195 

rounds he had caught scores of the police in dere- 
liction of duty and he dismissed them at once 
from the service. Others whom he had found 
worthy he promoted. He punished and rewarded 
after a plan entirely his own. Politics ceased to 
save or help the men and the '^ bosses" were up 
in arms. The uproar that followed had never 
been equaled as a police sensation in New York. 
The whole force was in a state of fright. The 
evil element that had so long found protection 
through contributions to the officers of the law 
suddenly discovered that they were outlaws to 
be thrown into prison and punished whenever 
they were caught breaking the law. Mr. Roose- 
velt's life was threatened, and twice explosives 
were placed in his desk with the evident inten- 
tion of assassination. But he went steadily on 
with his work, alike deaf to the threats of his 
enemies and the supplications of his friends. In 
this emergency an attempt was made to have 
Mr. Roosevelt's appointment by Mayor Strong 
vetoed by the council, but it was discovered that 
an act of the legislature, passed some twelve 
years before, had taken the power of veto from 
the city council. Theodore Roosevelt was 
author of this act, and its passage had been 



196 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

secured after one of the strongest fights he had 
made when a member of the assembly. 

Mr. Koosevelt announced that he would en- 
force the laws as he found them. He gave special 
attention to the operations of the excise law on 
Sunday, and after severe measures had been 
used with some of the more hardy saloon-keei^- 
ers, New York at last had, in June, 1895, for the 
first time within the memory of living man, a 
' ' dry ' ' Sunday. A great deal of good was done 
by Commissioner Roosevelt in breaking up much 
of the blaclanail which had been levied by police- 
men ; in transferring and degrading officers who 
were notoriously responsible for the bad name 
the force had, and in making promotions for 
merit, fidelity and courage. Mr. Roosevelt's 
career as a police commissioner made him ex- 
tremely unpopular with the class at which his 
crusade was aimed. 

The fierce crusade against the saloon-keepers 
was brief, and its effect lasted but a few weeks. 
The new commissioner gave his attention to 
more important matters, and really made the 
force cleaner than it had been before. He 
undoubtedly gained the hearty devotion of the 
better class of policemen. He was most careful 



CITY POLITICS. 197 

of their comfort, and quick to see and reward 
merit. He was also quick to punisli, and this 
kept the worse half of the men on their good 
behavior. 

One important result Mr. Eoosevelt obtained 
in this position was the dissipation of much of 
the antagonism which had theretofore been ap- 
parent on every occasion between labor unions 
and the force. Men on a strike had been accus- 
tomed to regard the policeman as a natural 
enemy, but all this was changed. On one occa- 
sion, when a large number of operatives were 
out of work, Mr. Roosevelt sent for their leaders, 
and, after a discussion of the situation, suggested 
that the strikers should organize pickets to keep 
their own men in order. He promised that the 
police should support and respect the rights of 
these pickets and the result was most satisfac- 
tory. The threat of a cordon of police was 
removed from the strikers, and no collisions such 
as had occurred on so many similar occasions 
took place with the guardians of the law. 

The attacks of the enemies which Mr. Roose- 
velt's methods raised up against him were not 
confined to verbal denunciation, nor expressions 
through the press. As has been said above, 



198 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

dynamite bombs were left in his office. A part of 
his associates on the police board fought his every 
move, and all the skill of New York politicians 
with whom he interfered was exercised to trap 
him into a situation where he would become dis- 
credited in his work. In this they were unsuc- 
cessful and the stormy career of the police force 
continued. In the end the new commissioner 
conquered. He had the necessary power and the 
personal courage and tenacity of purpose to 
carry out his plans. He fought blackmail until 
he had practically stopped it, and he promoted 
and removed men without regard to color, creed 
or politics. He resigned in April, 1897, to be- 
come Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ASSISTANT SECRETAEY OF THE NAVY. 

REBUILDS THE AMERICAN NAVY — INTRODUCES TARGET PRACTICE 
WITH POWDER AND BALL— ACTIVE IN PREPARATION FOR WAR 
WITH SPAIN— ADVISES ORDERING COMMODORE DEWEY TO THE 
CHINA STATION— RESIGNS FOR ACTIVE DUTY IN THE FIELD. 

President McKinley was first inaugurated 
March 4, 1897. He immediately announced 
Ms cabinet selections, and as quickly thereafter 
as Hon. John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy, 
could effect a reorganization of his department, 
Theodore Roosevelt was made First Assistant 
Secretary, and really the executive officer— the 
controlling and directing force— of that very 
important arm of the nation's power. The 
appointment was most fitting, as his ''Naval 
Histoiy of the War of 1812" had proved him 
as completely master of the subject as any man 
not trained to a naval life could possibly be. 

Years before a sentiment of hostility against 
Spain had grown up in the minds of the Ameri- 
can people. It was never officially recognized, 

199 



200 THEODOEE KOOSEVELT. 

and the Madrid government liad always been 
treated as a friendly power by each successive 
administration at Washington. 

It would scarcely be exact to state that the 
antipathy mentioned went even in the most 
aggressive minds to the extent of a desire for 
the conquest or the humiliation of Spain, beyond 
one single consideration. It was felt that the 
Spaniard should be driven from Cuba. The sur- 
face sentiment was that Cuba should be free. 
Beneath that, doubtless, rested the hope, in many 
minds, that the island, with all its riches and its 
possibilities, should be added to American terri- 
tory. The terms of that accession had never been 
crystallized into anything like a national senti- 
ment. Probably they had never been formu- 
lated in the mind of any adventurer who made 
essay for the liberation of the Cuban. But the 
student, the observer of great affairs, the man 
capable of estimating international causes and 
effects, knew that whenever collision came— and 
its coming was certain— Cuba would not only 
be wrested from the Spanish crown, but would 
become a part of the territoiy of the United 
States, and that the century-old habit of hermit- 
age would be broken by the people of the grow- 



PKEPAEING FOR WAR. 201 

ing American Republic. Unnumbered filibuster- 
ing expeditions had been directed by adventurers 
in America against Spanish rule in the island, 
and in spite of repressive efforts from Washing- 
ton, the whole nation was permeated with the 
feeling that America's relations with Cuba 
should be changed. It is possible there was a 
commercial element in the make-up of that con- 
clusion: the island annually exported $100,- 
000,000 in produce, ninety- three per cent, of 
which came to the United States. It may be the 
sentiment of self-defense operated as a cause: 
the peril of the plague, hurrying from Havana 
to American cities, was a continually impending 
fate. But running through all other considera- 
tions was the one of humane feeling. The peo- 
ple of Cuba were grievously used by the Span- 
iards, and had been for three centuries. In the 
year 1896 it happened that a singularly savage 
policy of repression had been inaugurated by 
Spain toward the people of the island, and the 
whole civilized world was shocked at the atroci- 
ties practiced. It is idle to pause now and reca- 
pitulate the enormity of those offenses against 
justice. All mankind knows there was warrant 
for compelling the Spaniard to halt. 



202 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

It should also be remembered that the spirit 
of Americans had been roused by the conditions 
obtaining in the island, and that common justice 
approved the policy of intervention— no matter 
what the national courtesy of the Government 
may have been. There was Narciso Lopez, who 
more than forty years before had led an expedi- 
tion for the freeing of Cuba. There was the 
landing of Captain Fry and his adventurers at 
Santiago, their capture b}^ the Spaniards— and 
the execution of sixty men, mostly American 
citizens. There had been other adventures in 
the interim, and the national conventions of both 
great parties had declared time and again for the 
freedom of the island people. Extremists knew 
the status quo could not long be maintained. But 
there were few even of the wisest men who under- 
stood the full import of that sentiment existing 
throughout America, and not on the Atlantic 
coast alone ; nor did they even speculate on the 
means of directing the sentiment to a realiza- 
tion in fact. 

Mr. Eoosevelt had been for years an advo- 
cate of a broader policy for the nation. It was 
as clear to him that Spain must leave the West- 
ern continent as it should have been to Massasoit 



PEEPAEING FOE WAE. 203 

tliat the Indians would have to leave New Eng- 
land. In that departure from traditional policy 
which must be expressed by interference in 
Cuba, he knew there would be a breaking up and 
a general readjustment of relations in every 
quarter of the world, and that the United States, 
being now fully prepared, was in a day to become 
a world-nation. 

Nothing could have been more fortunate than 
his selection for the chief executive office in the 
navy department. It was the one arm that could 
be made to reach around the world. And it was 
fortunate that so well-equipped a man came to 
the station. Mr. Roosevelt had studied the navy 
of the United States. He had compared it crit- 
ically with the navies of the world, both of the 
present and in the more remote past. He was 
the friend and confidant of Captain Mahan, an 
authority" on naval matters. He visited the 
Army and Navy Club, and became familiar with 
the details of life in his chosen branch of the 
service, with the record of the officers, and with 
the nature of the rank and file. He knew pre- 
cisely how well-equipped for battle each ship 
was, if battle should suddenly arise. He went 
on a tour of inspection, and woke the officers 



204 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

and men to a realization that millions spent for 
ships and equipment could not alone provide an 
efficient navy. 

Within those hurrying months from the 
spring of 1897, when he was appointed, to the 
day in 1898 when he resigned, Mr. Roosevelt 
caused every ship to be put in readiness for 
actual service. He had their bunkers filled with 
coal, and impressed their commanders with the 
necessity of maintaining a supply. He had the 
crews filled by enlistment, and the official list 
weeded of material that could not be depended 
upon. He ordered target-practice with powder 
and ball— and that was an innovation which 
called forth a good deal of criticism at the time. 
It had been the general habit, not often varied, 
to make target-practice simply a matter of quick 
and orderly handling of the guns. It seemed a 
woeful waste of money to shoot valuable steel and 
iron at an inoffensive mark. But there was no 
other way in which to perfect officers in finding 
the range, or gunners in accuracy of aim. He 
saw the unprepared condition of American ships 
in the China Sea, a condition that would be 
embarrassing indeed if circumstances should 
arise requiring movement against Spain in the 



PREPARING FOR WAR. 205 

far Pacific. And lie caused ammunition to be 
sent to that station, and held there pending 
demand. 

And, above all things, as the day of collision 
with Spain came inevitably nearer, he ordered 
Commodore Dewey to the China station with a 
fleet fully equal to all demands that could be 
made upon it. 

Meantime events in the United States were 
swiftly tending to war. It was impossible for a 
nation of the culture and justice realized in the 
United States to permit without protest the sav- 
age atrocities of the Spaniards in the West 
Indies. The people of Cuba had begun their 
revolution in 1895, and the warlike Campos had 
been unable to suppress them. He was recalled 
to Madrid, and Weyler was sent in his stead. 
This latter officer, ineradicably established in the 
enduring gallery of infamy, had served his 
country well in the Philippines. He had crushed 
a rebellion there, and he came, fresh with the 
laurels of an Alva or a Caligula, to the work of 
throttling human freedom on the very threshold 
of the American Kepublic. Every day Ameri- 
cans were learning more and more of the cruelty 
of his rule. His celebrated " reconcentrado " 



206 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

order, wliich swept the population from their 
farms and huddled them in the towns, treating as 
rebels all who did not come in ; abusing, insult- 
ing, outraging and starving those who came, 
passed into history as the climax of executive 
barbarity. Statesmen from America, loath to 
move unadvisedly, went to Cuba and made a per- 
sonal investigation of conditions there. John M. 
Thurston, United States Senator from Nebraska, 
accompanied by his wife, was one of those who 
sought a personal assurance by a visit to the 
troubled island. Mrs. Thurston, worn with labor 
for the suffering, crushed by the spectacle of 
such cruelty, died on her return to Washington ; 
and her husband, in one of the most notable 
addresses ever delivered there, pleaded for inter- 
vention in the name of that broad humanity 
which all the world could appreciate. She had 
been a woman of keen sensibilities and large 
charity. She had seen the starving and naked 
women and children lying in the sun, in cities to 
which they had been driven and from which they 
could not escape, gazing with unwinking, un- 
comprehending eyes at the visitors; and she 
had seen them die. 

"Wben her sorrowing husband rose to address 



PREPAEING FOR WAR.. 207 

the Senate he said : ' ' I have a right to speak. I 
give to you a message from silent lips ; and if I 
held my i^eace when such a question is under 
discussion, if I refrained from testifying to the 
atrocious cruelties inflicted upon the people of 
Cuba, I should falter in my trust ; I should fail 
in my duty to one whose heart was broken while 
a nation hesitated. ' ' 

He was one of many whose voice was for 
intervention, even thou^'h intervention should 
mean war. Without regard to party, the people 
of the United States, more unitedly than they 
ever had been before on a question of such 
import, urged Congress and the President to 
move for the relief of Cuba. But the executive 
end of the Government was— as it should have 
been— conservative to the last. There was to be 
no blind rushing into war, no official action 
which should precipitate a conflict between 
nations, if any less costly course could be found. 
In the very midst of that pause, when popular 
clamor and administrative reserve held equally 
balanced through the midwinter season, came 
the one astounding event which swelled the pop- 
ular clamor to a roar, and stilled utterly the voice 
of caution. 



208 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

The Maine was blown up ! 

Lying in the harbor of a nation still 
''friendly," in the "noon of the night," an 
American battle-ship on a visit of courtesy was 
destroyed by a submarine mine in the supposed 
security of Havana harbor. Captain Sigsbee, 
of the sunken craft, appealed to the American 
people for a suspension of judgment until an 
investigation could be had. But the nation had 
decided. The case had been tried. The Span- 
iards were found guilty in the court of American 
common sense. The Maine was blown up on the 
night of February 15, 1898. April 20 President 
McKinley cabled to Minister Woodford, at Ma- 
drid, the ultimatum of the United States : Spain 
must retire from Cuba and Cuban waters within 
thirty days, or take the consequences. The next 
day, before he could present the demand of his 
Government, General Woodford was handed his 
passports, by order of the ministry at Madrid, 
and thus officially terminated the friendly rela- 
tions of the two governments. It was the final 
act in a remarkable succession of events which 
proved Spain's contempt for the United States— 
which illustrated her remarkable ignorance 
both of the power against which she flung her- 




MR. ROOSEVELT, AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, 
IN HIS OFFICE AT WASHINGTON 



PREPARING FOR WAR. 209 

self and tlie result that was morally certain to 
follow. 

April 25 Congress, responding to a special 
message from the President, declared war with 
Spain to be in existence, and that it had existed 
since April 21, when Sjmin herself had severed 
relations with our Government. That same day 
the President's proclamation was given to the 
world. And the end for which so many forces of 
humanity, of justice and of national and individ- 
ual interest had labored through fifty years was 
accomplished. The protest of a Christian nation 
against such savagery as heathens have not 
equaled was recorded. 

It is a little curious to reflect just here on the 
service Mr. Roosevelt had rendered his country 
in the short year of his labor in the navy depart- 
ment. So far as the army was concerned, there 
was a distressing state of " unpreparedness. " 
The word is not agreeable to the ear, but it 
expresses the situation wonderfully well. So far 
as numbers went, the army was wholly inade- 
quate. A new force had to be secured. Volun- 
teers must be called for. They must be armed, 
clothed, equipped, paid and drilled. Not one 
step had been taken in preparation for the event 



210 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

which all men knew was certain to come. The 
legal limit of the regular army was twenty-five 
thousand men; and it did not contain so many. 
There was no clothing for the one hundred and 
twenty-five thousand volunteers called for by the 
President— and they offered themselves without 
delay. There were no arms for them. They 
lacked ammunition, especially the smokeless 
powder which is necessary for the best results 
in warfare. Not only must men be recruited, but 
they must be officered, organized into an effective 
force and provided with all that an army needs 
for battle or for camp. 

On the other hand, the navy was ready. And 
there is no more significant fact in the whole his- 
tory of the period than that the arm of the serv- 
ice which was first called upon to bear the brunt 
of the struggle was prepared at the first demand. 
The navy struck the first blow. Commodore 
Dewey was informed at Yokohama of the 
strained relations between the United States and 
Spain. He assembled his squadron at Hong- 
Kong, and was ready for any orders that might 
come to him. He had plenty of coal, provided 
by the assistant secretary of the navy. He had 
an abundance of ammunition, which had been 



PREPARING FOR WAR. 211 

hurried from the United States months before. 
He had officers selected from the whole list in 
commission for their fitness and their readiness 
for orders. He had a crew on every ship trained 
to every detail of work, hardened by drill and 
efficient through practice. And there was not a 
vessel in his squadron which lacked even the 
smallest detail in preparation for any struggle, 
no matter how severe. 

It is idle here to tell again the battle of Manila 
Bay. Some have arisen with sneering criticism 
of the inequality in that struggle, describing the 
enemy's squadron as "a lot of tubs." Yet they 
were capable war-vessels, and fought from the 
protection of forts which are always conceded to 
have an advantage. If Admiral Dewey had led 
to that task the navy of 1897 he might have won ; 
but he would have paid for victory in the lives of 
American sailors, and in the loss of vessels that 
at the time could ill have been spared. Prepared 
as he was by Mr. Roosevelt 's orders, he surpassed 
Salamis— and lost neither ship nor man. The 
event is without parallel in all the history of 
naval battles. 

Similarly, in the Western ocean, the same con- 
dition of ''preparedness" was observed. Mr. 



212 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Roosevelt brought to the duties of his office a 
great interest in the work, as well as a tremendous 
energy and talent for closely studying and mas- 
tering his task, which had characterized him in 
other fields. He also brought to these restful 
members of the navy department some of his 
startling methods, and again proved himself the 
' ' storm center, ' ' a name which had already been 
given to him, and to which he was better entitled 
than any other man in public life. In the fall of 
1897 he was detailed to inspect the fleet in Hamp- 
ton Roads, and he kept the commanders and their 
jacldes in a ferment for a week. Whenever he 
thought of a drill he would like to see, he ordered 
it. The crews were called to quarters at night, 
and all sorts of emergency orders were given, at 
various hours. When the assistant secretary 
came back to Washington to re^^ort, he had at 
least mastered some of the important details of 
the situation, and the ''Flying Squadron" was 
insured against any sort of surprise. 

So far as human foresight and official pro- 
vision could manage, the navy was ready. The 
"Flying Squadron" haunted the shores of Cuba, 
gathering prizes, closing the gates of harbors 
to reinforcements, or "bottling them up," and 



PEEPAKING FOR WAR. 213 

waiting in grim silence for the liour of their 
sure destruction. The powerful Oregon was 
summoned in haste from the Pacific, and while 
Spain was thus checked in the one effectual man- 
ner, that army which had not existed when war 
was declared had been recruited, armed, drilled 
and equipped, and had landed in Cuba. One of 
the most reliable histories of the war with Spain 
contains this passage: ''The first fight by sol- 
diers in General Shafter's army of invasion 
occurred June 24, five miles from Santiago de 
Cuba— so far had the Americans penetrated. 
Two troops of the First Cavalry, two troops of 
the Tenth Cavalry, and four troops of Roose- 
velt's 'Rough Riders'— less than a thousand men 
in all— dismounted and attacked two thousand 
Spanish soldiers in the thickets. They beat back 
the enemy to the very outworks of the city, but 
they left seventeen dead in that fierce struggle, 
that passage in a war for humanity. ' ' 

All who are familiar with the records of those 
years know the names of the men most active in 
fanning the flame of war. It is safe to say that 
the name of Theodore Roosevelt was never men- 
tioned as adding fuel to that flame. But while 
Senator Mason thundered at the doors of the 



214 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

White House, demanding a declaration of war— 
whether or no; while congressmen from every 
section of the country, and from the councils of 
every party, were writing down their country- 
men as cowards for not hastening to a conflict 
that was more expected than prepared for— Mr. 
Roosevelt was working night and day in an 
effort to fit the navy for fighting. And the 
moment war was declared and his work there was 
ended, he resigned his comfortable office and 
hurried to the field. He could have remained as 
executive head of the navy department, assisting 
greatly in the prosecution of the war. But he 
preferred to leave the ease of office to others, and 
take himself a share in the struggle. It was to 
him the nation is indebted for the formation of 
that force known as the ''Rough Riders." It 
was due to his initiative, his energy, his contin- 
ual efforts that they were prepared so swiftly, 
and waited so early at the point of embarkation. 
It was due to his ability as a commander that 
they behaved so well under fire, and wholly due 
to his habit of sharing every danger and every 
hardship with them that the men of his com- 
mand—and all other commands in the land 



PEEPARING FOR WAR. 215 

forces before Santiago— routed an intrenched 
foe, and defeated a regular army. 

It is not necessary to speak of him in battle, 
yet he bore himself well there. He gave no evi- 
dence of fear. He was careful in the handling of 
his men, and exposed them to no unnecessary 
peril. But he led them when they went into 
danger. He did not follow. And when battles 
were over he gave to his men all the tender care 
that loving duty could inspire, and shared with 
them, on every occasion, the glory that their 
deeds and his had earned. A recent writer has 
said of him: "As assistant secretary of the 
navy, he was virtually head of the department. 
He was a Carnot who 'organized victory.' He 
foresaw the Spanish war a year before it came, 
and collected ammunition, insisted on the prac- 
tice for improving marksmanship on board all 
the vessels, and made the navy ready." Said 
the late Senator Cushman K. Davis, chairman 
of the committee on foreign relations: ''If it 
had not been for Roosevelt, Dewey would not 
have been able to strike the blow that he dealt 
at Manila. Eoosevelt's sagacity, energy and 
promptness saved us. ' ' One of the most famous 



I 



216 THEODOEE KOOSEVELT. 

publications said in a recent issue: ''When the 
war of 1898 started Mr. Roosevelt was one of the 
first to enter it. He attracted to his banner the 
most typical corps— college graduates, plains- 
men, jDolo-players, and cowboys— of Americans 
who served in the war. And he gave himself 
and them a world rei^utation as fighters. ' ' 

Probably never before in the history of a 
country has so remarkable a thing happened. 
Here was a man who could prepare a navy for 
swift and effective assault, send it to victory with 
the first bugle-call of war, and then organize and 
lead to triumph ashore a band of fighting men 
who were capable of following such leadership 
against any foe in the world. It is not easy to 
discover a parallel. 



CHAPTER XII. 

FORMATION OF THE EOUGH RIDERS. 

FRIENDSHIP FOR COLONEL WOOD — A MONTH WELL SAVED— COW- 
BOYS, CLUBMEN AND HUNTERS RALLY TO HIS STANDARD — 
BEST FIGHTING MATERIAL THAT EVER MARCHED TO THE 
FIELD— DRILLING, PREPARING AND EMBARKING— THE LANDING 
ON CUBAN SOIL. 

Mr. Roosevelt had done all that could be done 
in the navy department. So far as the supervi- 
sion and power of man could effect it, the navy 
was ready; and the striking of that blow at 
Spanish commerce when the Ventura was cap- 
tured between Key West and Havana proved the 
state of preparedness which existed on the ocean. 
The swiftly following victory of Commodore 
Dewey at Manila established the case even more 
completely, for the most remarkable victory in 
all naval history had been achieved. And now 
that war was surely on, this man who saw the 
results of his foresight and provision in that 
branch of the service, started to find a way in 
which he could assist in leading the land forces 



218 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

in the figlit wliicli he had helped to induce Amer- 
icans to make. Just what should be the method 
of i^rocedure he did not know. He had met 
in Washington in the winter of 1897-98 Dr. 
Leonard Wood, a surgeon in the regular army, 
who had seen active service on the frontier, and 
who was medical adviser of both the President 
and the Secretary of the Navy. Dr. Wood 
was a powerful, forceful man, and Mr. Roose- 
velt became very much attached to him. They 
rode or walked about the city, took exercise 
together, and each found the other the sort of 
man to be depended upon. As they walked or 
rode they talked of the certainly approaching 
war. Both wanted to get into the service. Both 
believed the struggle would be of short duration 
—unless some other nation in Europe should 
come to the assistance of Spain ; and neither had 
the patience to wait for the slow movements of 
the regular army. Both were agreed that effect- 
ive blows must be struck at once by the army as 
by the nsivj ; that lives would be preserved, and 
treasure saved from wasting if the advances of 
the United States forces could be accomplished 
without delay. 

It was principally through the efforts of Mr. 



KOUGH RIDERS. 



219 



Roosevelt that Congress provided for the forma- 
tion of three volunteer cavalry regiments re- 
cruited from the plainsmen, sharpshooters and 
hard riders of the Southwest ; and as soon as this 
was done Secretary Alger tendered him the com- 
mand of one of those regiments. But he had 
never overestimated himself. He secured for 
Dr. Wood the command of that regiment, for 
he knew the latter was fully prepared for the 
duty ; and he took second place. Colonel Wood, 
armed with his new commission, hurried to the 
Southwest to recruit and equip his men, while 
Mr. Roosevelt performed a far more important 
service at the time by remaining in Washington 
to secure the assistance that must always come 
from headquarters and which would never have 
been obtained if an energetic, persistent and 
fully informed man had not been upon the 
ground to compel it. When he had made all his 
arrangements there, he had accomplished the 
remarkable feat of saving a month. Those thirty 
days were of the greatest possible value to the 
nation. Organized in the ordinary manner, with 
officers two thousand miles from Washington, 
the Rough Riders would not have been ready 
for service before midsummer. There was a 



220 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

prejudice against them, anyway. Tlie depart- 
ments liad a long-establislied habit of according 
chief consideration to the regular army. When 
other volunteer commands were clamoring for 
belts and blankets, Mr. Roosevelt's regiment was 
waiting— armed, accoutered, drilled and ready, 
leaning from the piers at Tampa, and yearning 
for the conflict in Cuba. 

He had drawn to the command men from 
every walk of life, and he greeted them cordially 
when he arrived from Washington. Scarcely a 
man of his thousand but was personally known 
to him. Some were hunters. Some were cow- 
boys. Some were graduates of colleges, with 
enviable records in the field of athletic sports. 
Some were clubmen, possessed of wealth, but 
possessed of strength, energy and enthusiasm as 
well. He understood the grim exigencies of war, 
and knew that no preparation for a frolic could 
be i^roper preparation for a campaign, no mat- 
ter how decrepit the enemy. He could not be 
certain that all these rich young men had counted 
the cost, and he was afraid they would find it 
hard to serve— not for a few days, but for 
months, or perhaps years— in the ranks, while he, 
their former intimate associate, was a field-offi- 



EOUGH EIDERS. 221 

cer. But they insisted that they knew their 
minds, and the event showed that they did. 
Before allowing them to be sworn in he gath- 
ered them together and explained that if they 
went in they must be prepared not merely to 
fight, but to perform the weary, monotonous labor 
incident to tlie ordinary routine of a soldier's 
life ; that they must be ready to face fever exactly 
as they were ready to face bullets ; that they were 
to obey unquestioningly, and to do their duty, if 
called upon to garrison a fort, as readily as if 
sent to the front. He warned them that work 
which was irksome and disagreeable must be 
performed as willingly as work that was danger- 
ous. He had no fears of them as to the latter, 
and he told them that they were entirely at lib- 
erty not to go; but that after they had once 
signed there could be no backing out. They had 
the option of going or of remaining at home. 
Not a man of them backed cut— not a man of 
them failed to do his whole duty. 

Generally they were of the fighting sort. 
There were sheriffs and marshals from Arizona 
and Texas, owners of mines who had fought 
their way up from the pick and shovel to the bank 
account. There was Buckey 'Neill of Arizona, 



222 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

and Captain Llewellyn of New Mexico. There 
was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken up the 
''Black Jack" gang on the border, and Captain 
Curry, a New Mexican gun-fighter of fame. 
There was Micah Jenkins, of South Carolina, a 
gentle and courteous gentleman on whom danger 
acted like wine; and there was Allyn Capron, 
fourth in a line of soldiers— rated by Mr. Roose- 
velt as perhaps the best soldier in the regiment. 

One may be i^ardoned for quoting the fol- 
lowing passage from Colonel Roosevelt's own 
book, "The Rough Riders": 

"The men generally gave one another nick- 
names, largely conferred in a spirit of derision, 
their basis lying in contrast. A brave but fastid- 
ious member of an Eastern club, who was serv- 
ing in the ranks, was christened 'Tough Ike'; 
and his bunkie, the man who shared his shelter- 
tent, and who was a decidedly rough cow- 
puncher, gradually acquired the name of 'The 
Dude.' One unlucky and simple-minded range- 
rider, who had never been east of the great plains 
in his life, unwarily boasted that he had an aunt 
in New York, and ever afterward he went by the 
name of 'Metropolitan Bill.' A huge, red- 
headed Irishman was named 'Sheenv Solomon.' 



EOUGH RIDERS. 223 

A young Jew who developed into one of the best 
fighters in the regiment accepted with entire 
equanimity the name of 'Pork-chop.' We had 
quite a number of professional gamblers who, I 
am bound to say, usually made good soldiers. 
One who was almost abnormally quiet and gentle 
was called 'Hell-roarer'; while another who, in 
point of language and deportment, was his exact 
antithesis, was known as ' Prayerful James. ' ' ' 

Their arms were the regular army carbine, 
the Krag, though a few held to their favorite 
"Winchesters, using the new models which took 
the Government cartridge. They did not drill 
with the saber. Mr. Roosevelt and Colonel Wood 
both knew that would be a needless waste of time, 
as the saber is a useless weapon in modern war- 
fare. They secured horses, and practiced 
mounted drill with great diligence ; but it turned 
out that they served as foot-soldiers, and some 
days were lost because the unprepared war de- 
partment was unable to send their horses to Cuba. 

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this 
war with Spain was the promptness with which 
men of wealth and social position volunteered 
for the service, and the fidelity with which they 
did their duty. Of those enlisted in the Rough 



224 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

Eiders, Colonel Roosevelt has said : ' ' Their only 
thought was how to perfect themselves in their 
duties. They were never so tired as not to 
respond with eagerness to the slightest sugges- 
tion of doing something new, whether it was 
dangerous, or merely difficult and laborious. 
They not only did their duty, but were constantly 
on the watch for some new duty that they could 
construe to be theirs. No call was ever made 
upon them to which they did not respond with 
eager thankfulness for having the chance to 
answer it. Later on I worked them as hard as I 
knew how, and the regiment and the country will 
always be their debtor. ' ' 

The ordnance bureau at "Washington, cu- 
riously affected with the ' ' manana ' ' policy of the 
Mexican, had been sending by freight the equip- 
ments most needed by the Rough Riders ; but had 
finally yielded to Colonel Roosevelt's urging, 
and began the use of express trains. So that just 
as the last rifles, revolvers and saddles came, the 
Rough Eiders were ordered to proceed by train 
to Tampa, Florida. Instantly all was joyful 
excitement. San Antonio, Texas, had been their 
headquarters, and they were glad to make their 
start from the city where the Alamo preserves 




MR. ROOSEVELT AS A UNITED STATES VOLUNTEER 



ROUGH RIDERS. 225 

the memories of Crockett, Bowie and their heroic 
companions in arms. The journey to Tampa 
occupied four days. There were more than a 
thousand men, and the full complement of horses. 
Then they had a pack-train of 150 animals ; and 
the train which moved the regiment was cut into 
seven sections, Wood commanding the first three, 
and Roosevelt the remaining four. They left 
San Antonio May 29, 1898. June 2 their camp 
was pitched at Tam.pa, with tents standing neatly 
in long streets, and supplied with every adjunct 
that good management could provide. They were 
told that marching orders would be issued imme- 
diately, and that they were to hold themselves in 
readiness. But they were also told that four 
troops, with all the horses, would have to be left 
behind. That was the bitterest disappointment 
any member of the Rough Riders ever knew. ' ' I 
saw," says Mr. Roosevelt, ''more than one 
among the officers and privates burst into tears 
when he found he could not go. ' ' But some had 
to be chosen and some had to be left. One of the 
captains chosen was Maximilian Luna, the only 
man of pure Spanish blood who bore a commis- 
sion in the army. His people had been on the 
banks of the Rio Grande before the Roosevelts 



226 THEODORE EO* oEVELT. 

came to the iiioutli of the Hudson, or Colonel 
Wood 's ancestors landed at Plymouth Rock ; and 
he claimed a right to go as a representative of 
his race in America. He demanded the privi- 
lege of proving that his people were as loyal 
Americans as any others, and they took him. 

The command was ordered to be at a certain 
track on the night of .June 6, there to take a train 
for Port Tampa, nine miles distant. The soldiers 
were there, but the train was not. Colonel Roose- 
velt hurried to the tents of brigadier-generals, 
and to the headquarters of major-generals ; but 
no one knew anything at all of arrangements. 
The men slept heavily through the night, and 
at three o'clock in the morning they received 
orders to go to another track, half a mile away. 
No train was there, either; but at six o'clock a 
string of gravel-cars came along, and these were 
seized by the officers of the Rough Riders, and 
backed down the dusty, sunny nine miles to the 
port. 

Lack of system in the management of the mil- 
itary was still evident, for when the First Volun- 
teers reached the quay, they did not know where 
to go, nor which transport they were expected to 
have, though their orders to ''go on board" were 



ROUGH RIDERS. 227 

imperative. Both Colonel Wood and Colonel 
Roosevelt spent a bad half-day searching for 
some hint as to direction, and at noon the depot 
quartermaster assigned them to the Yucatan, a 
transport lying in midstream. Colonel Wood 
hurried aboard and took jDossession, for he had 
discovered that this same transport had been 
assigned to two other regiments besides his own. 
It was a race to see who should first be ready to 
march aboard. Colonel Roosevelt ran full-speed 
back to the command, left a guard with the bag- 
'gage, and double-quicked the rest of the regiment 
to the pier just as Colonel Wood brought the big 
transport to the landing. Then the men spent 
a hot and dusty day carrying their baggage and 
the camp equipment down from the distant end 
of the wharf, where they had been compelled to 
leave the train, and stow^ing it away in the Yuca- 
tan. In the evening the transport was pulled out 
and anchored in midstream, and the Rough 
Riders felt they had had a rather interesting 
thirty-six hours. 

Nothing more significant than Colonel Roose- 
velt 's own words can be used in describing this 
phase of their service. In his book ' ' The Rough, 
Riders," he says: "The transports were over- 



228 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

loaded, the men being packed like sardines, not 
only below, but above decks. At niglit it was 
impossible to walk about without stepping over 
the bodies of sleepers. The travel rations were 
insufficient, because the meat was very bad. If 
we had been given canned corned beef we would 
have been all right; but instead of this the sol- 
diers were given a horrible stuff called 'canned 
fresh beef.' There was no salt in it. At the 
best it was stringy and tasteless. At the worst 
it was nauseating. Not one-fourth of it was ever 
eaten at all, even when the men became very hun- 
gry. There were no facilities for the men to 
cook anything. There was no ice for them. The 
water was not good, and they had no fresh meat 
or fresh vegetables. ' ' 

But all their hardships were borne without 
grumbling. They had wanted to come, and here 
they were— on the first transport that pushed 
from the pier at Port Tampa. They accepted 
the discomforts, and would not, for any conceiv- 
able consideration, have traded with their com- 
rades left behind there on the sand flats between 
Tampa and the river. Yet they were not advanc- 
ing toward Cuba. They were simply lying at the 
edge of the ocean, taking salt-water baths night 



BOUGH BIDEES. 229 

and morning for nearly a week, and fighting 
their first big battle in controlling themselves. 
At last, on the evening of June 13, they received 
the welcome order to start, and ship after ship 
weighed anchor and pushed ahead under half 
steam, the bands playing, the flags flying, and the 
I'igging black with soldiers cheering and shout- 
ing. The jubilation was short-lived, for the ships 
came to anchor presently, and waited till morn- 
ing. Then they were again all under way ; and 
by mid-afternoon the whole fleet had passed out 
of sight of land. For six days they sailed 
steadily southward and eastward, the thirty odd 
transports moving in parallel lines, while ahead 
and behind and on their flanks the gray hulls of 
the war-ships surged through the blue water. 
They were guarded by every variety of craft— 
battle-ship, cruiser, converted yacht, and torpe- 
do-boat. The war-ships watched with ceaseless 
vigilance day and night. When a sail of any 
kind appeared, instantly one of the guardians 
steamed toward it. Once a strange ship sailed 
too close, and the nearest torpedo-boat sped 
across the water toward it. But the stranger 
proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, death- 
fraught craft returned. 



230 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

That voyage through **the sapphire seas" 
was an experience whicli impressed every one. 
Not a man on the transport knew where the ship 
was going. It might be Cuba. It might be Porto 
Rico. They knew only that they were ordered 
forward by their Government, and they brought 
their lives in their hands as they hurried to obey. 
They were young and strong, eager to face what 
lay hidden before them. Sometimes they talked 
of what they might do in the future ; sometimes 
they lounged in groups and told stories of their 
previous lives in all conceivable environments, 
or sang through the evening hours. ''The offi- 
cers, too," says Colonel Eoosevelt, in one of his 
books, * ' had many strange experiences to relate. 
None had been through what was better worth 
telling or could tell it better than Capron. He 
was a great rifle-shot and wolf-hunter. He had 
handled his scouts, and dealt with the ' broncho ' 
Indians, the renegades from the tribes. He 
knew, so far as a white man could know, their 
ways of thought, and how to humor them. His 
training and temper had fitted him to do great 
work in war; and he looked forward with confi- 
dence to what the future held. Death was the 
prize he drew. 



ROUGH RIDERS. 231 

"Most of the men had simple souls. They 
could relate facts, but they said very little about 
what they dimly felt. Buckey 'Xeill, however, 
the iron-nerved, iron-willed fighter from Arizona, 
the sheriff whose name was a byword of terror 
to every wrong-doer, white or red, the gambler 
who with unmoved face would stake and lose 
every dollar he had in the world— he alone 
among his comrades was a visionary, an articu- 
late emotionalist. He was very quiet about it, 
never talking unless sure of his listener; but 
at night when we leaned on the railing to look 
at the Southern Cross, he was apt to speak of 
the mysteries that lie behind courage, behind ani- 
mal hatred and animal lust for the pleasures that 
have tangible shape. ' ' 

They had a good deal of trouble with the 
transports. One was towing a schooner and 
another a scow. Both kept lagging behind. 
Finally, when they had gone nearly the length of 
Cuba, the transport with the schooner fell very 
far behind, and then the Yucatan was ordered 
■ to drop out of the line and keep the laggard com- 
pany. Loaded with soldiers, wholly helpless to 
defend themselves in case of attack, entirely at 
the me rev of everv round shot that might be 



232 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

hurled toward tliem, these two crowded ships, 
guarded by a single gunboat, the Bancroft, 
plunged ahead through the night, and finally 
overtook the rest of the fleet just as the latter 
turned sharp to the southwest— and then every 
one knew Santiago de Cuba was their destination. 
They came close to the coast on the morning 
of June 20, passed Guantanamo, where just ten 
days before the marines had gained a footing at 
Crest Heights, and had given loyal American 
blood that the islanders might be free. The big 
ships, guarding the mouth of the harbor, had 
driven all Spanish forces from the shore north 
of Santiago, and the transports could at least be 
secure from attack while unloading. And there 
disembarking was accomplished. Close under 
the mighty bluffs that seemed to rise almost 
from the beach, lay the squalid little town of 
Daiquiri. There are mines of iron ore all around 
it, and a railway runs to Santiago. The place 
had strategic advantages. But the landing itself 
was a scramble— each commander taking care of 
himself and his men. There was still a woeful 
lack of system and of effective general leader- 
ship. The fleet had less than a fourth the num- 
ber of row-boats that were required for handling 




COL. ROOSEVELT AS A ROUGH RIDER 



ROUGH EIDEP.S. 233 

the men, and there was no dock which deep- 
draught vessels could approach. The war-ships 
lent what boats they could, and the little army 
began its slov^^ progress across the two miles of 
water that divided ships from shore, until Lieu- 
tenant Sharp, of the navy, commanding the 
Vixen, a converted yacht, recognized Colonel 
Roosevelt on the deck of the Yucatan, and offered 
to help put the Eough Eiders ashore. The serv- 
ice was gratefully accepted. On the Vixen was a 
Cuban pilot who knew every mile of the coast, 
and he proposed to take the Yucatan within five 
hundred yards of the beach. He was offered a 
reward if he would do so; and he did. The 
other transports followed, and the labor was 
greatly lightened. 

In spite of the difficulties, the landing became 
quite a frolic for the men. The surf ran high, 
and the boats could not place any one on dry 
land. Each man carried three days ' field rations, 
with gun and blanket, and a hundred rounds of 
ammunition. But they tumbled from the boats 
when no nearer approach could be made, and 
waded or swam till the solid earth was beneath 
their feet. The horses were unloaded from 
another transport, two hundred yards from 



234 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

shore. The process in this case was as simple as 
cruel. The animals were pushed overboard, and 
permitted to swim to land, or go down in the sea 
—whichever happened. Colonel Roosevelt's big 
horse, which his groom had named ' ' Rain-in-the 
Face," was drowned; but the pony, ''Texas," 
swam ashore without the slightest trouble. 

A few of the rich young men in the Rough 
Riders' regiment had added some light artillery 
pieces to the equipment of the command, making 
a free gift to the Government. There were two 
rapid-fire Colt automatic guns, and a dynamite 
gun. The task of bringing these ashore without 
injury was a difficult one, indeed. But it was 
done, and late in the afternoon of June 22 the 
little army had been established on Spanish soil, 
and was ready for any contingency that might 
arise— but with a decided preference for fight- 
ing. 

If any resistance at all had been made, the 
landing would have been rendered difficult to the 
point of impossibility. There had been five hun- 
dred Spaniards on the shore in the morning, and 
they had marched up and down the beach very 
threateningly. But they had run at the first fir- 
ing from the gunboats, and the Americans found 



BOUGH RIDERS. 235 

in their places, as evening fell, a crowd of Cuban 
insurgents— hungry, dirty, and armed with every 
kind of weapon imaginable, but with nothing that 
would mark them as an allied force. Their 
demands, indeed, were less modest than to be led 
against their ancient enemies. All they wanted 
was food— and plenty of it. 

Colonel Roosevelt's first task was to march 
his men about half a mile inland, to a place 
selected for the camping, and there to get them 
into the best possible shape for the morrow. The 
place was a bushy, dust-covered flat, with a jun- 
gle on one side, and fetid pools on the other. For 
the first time the men saw the huge land-crabs of 
the island, and marveled as the strange animals 
scuttled through the underbrush ; and they mar- 
veled even more when they heard these same 
creatures utter their disturbing cry in the still 
hours of the night. 

But the Rough Riders— dismounted— were 
in Cuba! Just fifty-two days had passed since 
the declaration of war. This was the only volun- 
teer force that reached Santiago in time to be of 
use in the fighting, with the single exception of 
the Seventy-first New York National Guard. The 
latter regiment had been organized for years, 



236 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

was fully armed, equipped, drilled and provided 
in every way. The Rough Riders had come in 
less than two months' time from the absolute 
beginning. Before April 30 not one step had 
been taken for their formation. Yet in this 
incredibly short time they were ready for the 
storming of San Juan hill. And they stormed it. 
Never before, perhaps, in the history of a 
civilized country, has such dispatch been made in 
the preparation of a fighting force. And cer- 
tainly never before was an organization so 
quickly brought to such a degree of efficiency. 
The result was due solely to Colonel Roosevelt's 
decision, energy, and remarkable capacity for 
leadershij^. The deciding element of the land 
force in Cuba was his personal contribution to 
the cause of his nation. And the recognition of 
this fact is probably the highest tribute that can 
be x)aid him. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 



BRIGADED WITH THE FORCES OF A FIGHTING MAN - THE AFFAIR 
AT LAS GUASIMAS, AND THE LOSS OF PRECIOUS LIVES -THE 
ROUGH RIDERS PROVE THEIR HEROISM IN BATTLE-FROM THE 
TRENCHES TO THE HOSPITAL— GRAVES IN ALIEN SOIL— AFTER 
PEACE, THE RETURN HOME. 

Months before tlie war broke out, Gen. S. M. 
B. Young, of tbe regular arm}^ bad been the 
guest of Mr. Eoosevelt and "Dr. Leonard Wood at 
a club in New York, and tbey bad told Mm tbat 
wben bostilities began-an event wbicb tliey 
confidently anticipated -tbey were going to ''try 
and get in. " " Come to my brigade, ' ' said Gen- 
eral Young, "and I guarantee to sbow you some 
figliting." And be kept bis word. 

At Tampa, in tbose distressing days wben 
tbey did not know wbere tbe Government wanted 
tbem to go, tbe Eougb Riders were brigaded witb 
tbe First and Tentb regular cavalry, under Gen- 
eral Young. Tbe latter organization was com- 
posed of colored men. It was called tbe Second 

237 



238 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Brigade. The first was made up of the Third, 
Sixth and Ninth— the latter also colored; and 
this was commanded by Brigadier-General Sum- 
ner. Major-General Joseph Wheeler com- 
manded the entire force— absolutely all the 
cavalry that saw service in the neighborhood of 
Santiago. 

The appointment of General A^Hieeler was of 
itself an interesting detail in the history of that 
war. He had been the most dashing and formid- 
able cavalry commander in the Confederate 
army at the time of the war between the States, 
and President McKinley had wisely believed that 
the selection of such a man would be a most 
advantageous move in the process of unifying 
the nation. Ever since the Civil War the spirit 
of sectionalism had existed. There were men, 
both in the North and in the South, who refused 
to accept the results of the war, and whose effort 
seemed directed to preventing that singleness of 
purpose and action by which national advance 
could best be made. So far as lay in their power 
they were inflicting a harm upon their country 
by that inexcusable treason which flourishes in a 
time of peace and prosperity. With the begin- 
ning of the war against Spain the opportunity 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 239 

arose to cement the sections. The South had suf- 
fered as much as the North from the perils of 
Cuba. Its sons had been treacherously slaugh- 
tered in the destruction of the Maine. The war- 
like spirit which always lived in that section was 
fired with the desire for reprisal ; and the unex- 
pected happened when the whole South, from 
the Ohio to the Gulf, rallied to the defense of the 
national flag. Xo other act of recognition could 
have meant so much as this appointment of Gen- 
eral Wheeler to the command of the cavalry 
forces. Of all the great military leaders of the 
Confederacy still living, he best expressed the 
sentiment and enjoyed the favor of his section. 
Besides, it was, in a military sense, a particularly 
appropriate nomination. General Wheeler was 
a soldier. Though past the age of sixty years, 
he was full of vigor, possessed of an abundance 
of nervous force, still the master of military 
detail, and a natural leader of men. His appoint- 
ment was one of the wisest that the President 
could have made ; and with him in command it 
was an absolute certainty that the promise of 
General Young, that Mr. Roosevelt and his 
friend should see fighting, would be fulfilled. 
General Young was a fine type of the Amer- 



240 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

ican fighting soldier. In the field he carried the 
same impedimenta as did Colonel Roosevelt— a 
mackintosh and a toothbrush ! 

The next day after disembarking was largely 
employed in getting baggage and camp equipage 
ashore from the shii^s, a labor that was made 
additionally difficult because the War Depart- 
ment had not found the right men for the control 
of details in the quartermaster's department. In 
the afternoon the orders came for the soldiers 
to advance. General Wheeler, trained to practi- 
cal fighting, first found where the enemy was, 
and then directed General Young to take his bri- 
gade forward, and be ready to strike the Span- 
iards in the morning. 

Colonel Roosevelt found his pony, ' ' Texas, ' ' 
much the worse for its sea voyage and the forced 
swim ashore, but yet able to bear its master. 
The mid-afternoon sun was burning hot when 
the march began. Colonel Roosevelt led one 
squadron, and Major Brodie followed with the 
other. The jungle trail over the hills was so 
narrow and steep that in places the soldiers had 
to proceed in single file. The advance could 
never have been made had the Spaniards pos- 
sessed the courage or the capacity for any kind 




MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER 



SEKVICE IN CUBA. 241 

of fighting. But it seemed that four hundred 
years of cruelty had reduced them from their 
high estate, and they knew nothing of the art of 
war, and nothing of the science of defense. A 
curious feature of this first advance was the 
haste which inspired even the enlisted men. 
General Young wanted them to hurry, so they 
would be in position for actual service in the 
morning ; and it was to be expected that he would 
issue orders to that effect. But the men went 
farther than he could have hoped, and traversed 
a tangle of tropical woods and vines which he 
could well have believed impassable. They did 
not halt until they were at the extreme front of 
the American line. 

They were not in good shape for marching, 
because of the voyage, the lack of food and water, 
and the difficulties in the way. Besides, they 
were horsemen, in large majority. The cowboys 
in particular, excellent fighting material, had 
never walked a furlong if it could be avoided; 
and the hard tramp over the hills and through 
vine-entangled morasses was particularly trying 
to them. But there was no straggling. Very 
soon after dark they reached the little hamlet of 
Sibonev. The men built fires and fried their 



242 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

pork and boiled their coffee, and made such sup- 
per as they could, the officers faring precisely as 
did the men. And the supper was hardly fin- 
ished when the Americans had their first expe- 
rience with a rain-storm in Cuba. 

At midnight Colonel Wood returned from a 
visit to General Young, and brought that officer's 
plans for the advance in the morning. General 
AVheeler, who commanded, since General Shaf ter 
had not yet come ashore from the ships, had 
directed that the Spanish lines be struck as soon 
after daybreak as possible. 

At six 'clock in the morning General Young 
started with a squadron from the First Regular 
cavalry, and a squadron from the Tenth Kegu- 
lars. Colonel Wood and Colonel Roosevelt took 
a slightly different direction to reach the same 
objective, with the Rough Riders, and the two 
companies from the cavalry regiment of colored 
men. At half past seven the Spaniards were dis- 
covered, holding a rocky ridge that jutted for- 
ward, its angle lying between the two advancing 
forces of the Americans. There were stone 
breastworks on the hill, and blockhouses behind 
it. General Young ordered his men to fill their 
canteens, and then at eight o'clock opened the 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 243 

fight with his Hotchkiss guns, at nine hundred 
yards ' range. 

The Spaniards replied, and for the first time 
in more than fifty years American soldiers were 
engaged in war with an alien nation. In the very 
first half-minute Colonel Roosevelt's old-time 
wisdom in urging the adoption of smokeless pow- 
der was made manifest. The Spaniards, ages 
behind the times in everything else, had smoke- 
less powder, and it added greatly to the difficul- 
ties the Americans had to encounter. General 
Young, long used to Indian warfare, and recog- 
nizing this as in essentials the same, pushed his 
men forward for a closer touch with the enemy. 
A passage from Colonel Roosevelt's own story 
of this first battle will be peculiarly acceptable 
here. 

' ' The men were deployed on both sides of the 
road," he says, '4n such thick jungle that only 
here and there could they see ahead. Through 
this jungle ran wire fences, and when the troops 
got to the ridge they encountered precipitous 
bluffs. They were led most gallantly, as Ameri- 
can regular officers always lead their men; and 
the soldiers followed their leaders with the splen- 
did courage always shown by the American reg- 



244 THEODORE BOOSEVELT. 

ular soldier. There was not a single straggler 
among tliem, and in not one instance was an 
attempt made by any trooper to fall out in order 
to assist tlie wounded, or carry back the dead; 
and so cool were tliey and so perfect their fine 
discipline, that in the entire engagement the 
expenditure of ammunition was not over ten 
rounds per man. Major Bell, who commanded 
the squadron, had his leg broken by a shot as he 
was leading his men. Captain Wainwright suc- 
ceeded to the command of the squadron. CaiDtain 
Knox was shot in the abdomen. He continued 
for some time giving orders to his troops, and 
refused to allow a man from tlie firing-line to 
assist him to the rear. Lieutenant Byron was 
himself shot, but continued to lead his men until 
the wound and the heat overcame him, and he 
fell in a faint. . . . The Spaniards kept up 
a very heavy firing, but the regulars would not 
be denied, and as they climbed the ridges the 
Spaniards broke and fled." 

But the regulars did not win the fight alone. 
The Rough Eiders, starting at six o'clock in the 
morning, pushed through the jungle to the left, 
and on up the hills. Tiffany, one of the donors 
of the Colt rapid-firers and the dynamite gun, 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 



245 



had— to put the matter plainly— stolen from the 
quartermaster's department a pair of mules, and 
was using them to transport his ''automatics." 
Sergeant Borrowe, in charge of the dynamite 
gun, had found a like stroke of enterprise impos- 
sible, and could not bring up his piece. Greneral 
Wheeler has himself seen fit to declare, in his 
valuable book, ''The Santiago Campaign," that 
Sergeant Borrowe did all that lay in his power, 
and is wholly excusable for not bringing the 
dynamite gun into action. 

Captain Capron's troop was in the lead in 
that advance of AVood's squadron up the heights. 
It had been chosen for the most dangerous and 
responsible place because of Capron's admitted 
capacity. The order of advance sent Sergeant 
Hamilton Fish first, with four men as skirmish- 
ers; then Capron and the rest of his troop— all 
dismounted, of course. Colonel Wood followed 
with two troops, and Colonel Roosevelt with 
three. The Cuban guide at the head of the col- 
umn ran away as soon as the fighting commenced. 
There was a halt, and in the wait, while the men 
were obeying the order to fill their magazines 
with cartridges. Colonel Roosevelt overheard 
two of the Rough Riders nearest him discussing 



246 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

the conduct of a former cow-puncher who had 
quit a Texas ranch and embarked in the saloon 
business. So little did a ''gun fight" unnerve 
these heroic men from the Southwest. 

The three troops were ordered to deploy to 
the right of the trail, and to ''go in" as soon as 
the regulars began firing. The wait was brief. 
A crash in the jungle told of exploding shells, 
and the whole ridge flamed with fire from Span- 
ish guns. The air was full of the rustling sound 
of Mauser bullets fired by the enemy, but smoke- 
less powder left his position unrevealed. ' ' Grad- 
ually they got our range," says Colonel Roose- 
velt, "and occasionally one of our men would 
crumple up. In no case did the man make any 
outcry when hit, seeming to take it as a matter 
of course; at the outside making only such 
remark as, ' Well, I got it that time. ' ' ' 

In war all things are new. A trooper of the 
Tenth, sitting by a stump and firing steadily, 
was told by a passing comrade : 

"You've got a big wound in your hip." 

"Oh, that's all right. It's been there for 
some time," he replied, unconcernedly. 

No one was allowed to drop out of the line 
to care for the wounded or remove the dead ; but 



SEEVICE IN CUBA. 247 

the wouuded, if able to travel, were ordered to the 
rear. Rowland, a New Mexican, came back from 
a dangerous errand on which his commander had 
sent him, and presently Colonel Roosevelt noticed 
the man was wounded. 

*' Where are you hurt, Rowland?" he asked. 

''Aw— they caved in a couple of ribs for me, 
I guess. ' ' 

Colonel Roosevelt ordered him to go to the 
rear, and make himself as comfortable as he 
could in the hospital. Rowland, for the first time 
in his service, grumbled, and was inclined to 
argue the case. He did not want to leave. But 
when the order was repeated he disappeared, and 
was not seen for half an hour. But in the course 
of the advance, Colonel Roosevelt saw him again, 
and exclaimed : 

' ' I thought you were told to go to the hospi- 
tal." 

''Aw— I couldn't find the hospital," replied 
the man, a statement which his colonel doubted. 
And he remained on the firing-line to the end of 
the conflict. His conduct was typical of the 
heroism and fortitude of the whole American 
army. 

The fighting continued for two hours. The 



248 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

difficulty of finding tlie enemy was most exasper- 
ating. Smokeless powder permitted the Span- 
iards to fire without disclosing their location, 
and the black smoke of the Americans always 
revealed their position. But with all that dis- 
advantage the glasses of the American officers 
finally found the enemy, and the superior marks- 
manship of the soldiers drove the red-and-yellow 
flag and its followers in a run from their breast- 
works. That portion of their force opposed to the 
right of the Rough Riders, the left of the regular 
army men, withdrew completely. Then Colo- 
nel Roosevelt hurried to the left, where the resist- 
ance, though moderated, still continued. He was 
not just sure what plan General Young had for 
the present, and received no orders. ' ' But, ' ' he 
says, "I knew I could not be far wrong if I went 
forward. ' ' 

Nothing more truly tyi)ical of the man's life 
has ever been said, and no man has disclosed a 
characteristic more modestly, or with a more evi- 
dent unconsciousness of its simple strength. 

Here at the left the day had been costl5^ 
Captain Capron and Sergeant Hamilton Fish, 
one the fourth in a line of soldiers, the other the 
grandson of that Secretary of State who helped 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 249 

make Grant's cabinet strong, were killed. Lieu- 
tenant Thomas, grandson of General Thomas, 
''the hero of Chickamauga, " a boy of twenty- 
one, was badly wounded. Day, a nephew of that 
William Barker Gushing who sank the Confed- 
erate ram Albemarle, in 1864, was fighting hard 
at the head of his men— troop L, from the Indian 
Territory; and when the Spanish fire was try- 
ing the heroism of Indians, half-breeds and cow- 
boys so severely. Captain McClintock, hurrying 
to his support, was shot through the thigh. There 
were some red-tiled buildings about five hundred 
yards to the front, and from them much of the 
firing seemed to come. Colonel Roosevelt 
ordered a charge, and leaping forward, he ran 
at the head of his men toward the buildings. 
When they arrived they found heaps of warm 
and smoking cartridge-shells, and two dead 
Spanish soldiers. A position of importance had 
been carried. Shortly afterward Colonel Wood 
rejDorted that the fight was over for the time, and 
that the whole line of the enemy had retreated. 
The Eough Riders had lost eight men killed and 
thirty-four wounded. One man, Isbell, a half- 
breed, was hit seven times. Not a man was in 
that equivocal list, ' ' the missing. ' ' 



250 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

That ended the struggle of June 24. It was 
on the evening of the same day that a Spanish 
officer said, in the hearing of the British consul 
at Santiago: ''The Americans do not fight like 
other men. When we fire, they run right toward 
us. We are not used to fighting men who act so. ' ' 

Then followed nearly a week of inaction— 
trial most severe for fighting men at the front. 
But on June 30 the order came to hold themselves 
in readiness, and the exasperating wait was 
ended. Next noon the Rough Riders struck camp, 
and, together with the entire army of invasion, 
marched forward. At night they slept on the 
summit of El Poso hill, where were some ruijied 
buildings, and where the soldiers found a quan- 
tity of food, which was very welcome. The camp 
for the night being established, the men found a 
repeated proof of their colonel's quality. He 
might have taken one of the buildings for his 
headquarters, for he was at the time the superior 
officer in command; but he slept in the open, 
among his men, his saddle as a pillow, his mack- 
intosh being his only shelter. 

The men were up with the dawn, and ready 
for the battle which was very certain to come. 
At six o'clock the cannon began booming away 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 251 

ft 

to the right, and the puzzling, exasperating fight 
for the outposts of Santiago was on. As tlie 
troops prepared to move, Colonel Roosevelt 
received his one wound of the war. A Spanish 
shell exploded above his head, and a fragment 
struck his wrist. It scarcely broke the skin, and 
caused only the slightest pain. And although he 
was more exposed through the fighting than per- 
haps any other man in the army, he escaped 
entirely thereafter. The Rough Riders were 
ordered to cross the ford of the San Juan river, 
and halt for directions. There was a sunken lane 
just ahead, with strong barbed wire fences at 
each side, and a practically open field to the 
right and the left of it. 

By ten o'clock the fighting was on in good 
earnest, though mostly to the right. Mauser bul- 
lets drove in sheets above the heads of the wait- 
ing Americans, or hit them with invariable 
effect as they lay behind such cover as they 
could secure. They wanted to go forward, but 
the expected orders did not come till nearly 
eleven o'clock. Then Lieutenant Miley, General 
Shaffer's representative at the front, gave a 
reluctant consent for the advance. Instantly 
Colonel Roosevelt mounted his pony, ''Texas," 



252 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

and, taking his position at the rear of his regi- 
ment, where a colonel— in theory— should remain, 
he began pushing the men forward. They went 
in platoons, and as he saw those farthest in 
advance were continually getting mixed up with 
the regulars to the left, he went forward a platoon 
at a time till he found himself at the very head 
of the Rough Riders and close in the rear of the 
Ninth— a colored regiment— which had become 
"lapped over." 

At the crown of the first hill the Americans 
found themselves but five hundred yards from 
the Spanish position, and the futility of trying 
to rout the enemy by rifle firing became evident 
to Colonel Roosevelt. He told the officers in 
command of the regulars that his orders were to 
support them in their attack on the hills, but those 
commanders replied that they had been ordered 
to do no more than wait for further orders. It 
was a perilous place. Men were being hit by the 
Spaniards continually, and even the sharpshoot- 
ers of the enemy were secure from punishment, 
because of the smokeless powder they used. Then 
came a military illustration of the qualities which 
Mr. Roosevelt had shown in civil life unnum- 
bered times. 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 



253 



'*I am ordered to support you in your 
attack, ' ' lie said. 

''Yes, sir," replied the regular army officer. 

"And you are waiting for orders to ad- 
vance ? ' ' 

"Just so." 

"Then," looking about for a ranking officer, 
and finding none, "I am the ranking officer here, 
and I give you the order to attack. ' ' 

It rather took the captain by surprise, and he 
hesitated. 

"Then let my men through, sir," added the 
colonel of Rough Eiders ; and the First Volun- 
teers forgot all about the popping of Spanish 
bullets, in their admiration for their commander, 
and their zest for the battle which his masterful 
habit insured them. 

But when they started through, the example 
proved too much for the regulars, and they all 
rose with a whoop, officers and men, and went 
forward together. Colonel Eoosevelt, being 
mounted, could move more rapidly than the hur- 
rying, shooting men on foot, and he employed 
his advantage by assisting the other officers in 
getting their men in motion, and directing the 
different bodies to those points where the attack 



254 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

could most effectively be made. But as he 
jumped his little horse the third time across the 
barbed wire at the side of the lane, he dis- 
mounted, turned the animal loose, and ran on at 
the head of his men, up the hill, swinging his hat, 
and encouraging them. The hillside was cov- 
ered with soldiers. Rough Riders and men of the 
First and the Ninth all mingled and swarmed 
upward together. 

They passed one after another of the en- 
trenchments the enemy had occupied— and which 
would have been held had they possessed half 
the fighting quality of the men who attacked. 
In one of these trenches Colonel Roosevelt 
ordered his men to lie down and wait for a better 
formation. When he was ready to start again 
of course there was an indescribable confusion. 
The firing on both sides was incessant and effect- 
ive. The Gatling guns over at the right were 
beating their ominous tattoo on the position of the 
Spaniards, and when Colonel Roosevelt shouted 
his order for the Rough Riders to rise and ad- 
vance again, they did not hear him. He jumped 
out of the trench and ran, and four men who 
were nearest went with him. "Wlien he had run a 
hundred yards, and noticed that his command 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 255 

was not with him, he told the four to lie down in 
the grass and bushes till he could go back and 
start the rest of the line. He had a thought that 
if he came running back with even three or four 
the line might get the idea of a repulse, and that 
the effect would be bad. And the four made no 
objection. They lay prone on the ground, and 
continued firing at the occasional heads they 
could see popping up over the breastworks in 
front of them. 

Colonel Roosevelt, a little nettled that his 
command had not acted promptly, ran back and 
yelled at them: ''Why didn't you charge 
when I told you to?" They were greatly sur- 
prised. ''Why, we didn't hear you. Colonel," 
they exclaimed. ' ' Try it again. ' ' And when he 
tried it again, he was followed by the entire regi- 
ment, and by many a man from the regulars who 
took his cue from any force that was ready for 
the initiative. 

As they approached the crest of the hills, the 
Spaniards, amazed at the temerity of infantry 
which would charge up a hill with no heavy artil- 
lery to shell the works, abandoned their excellent 
trenches, and fled down the slopes. And when 
the Rough Riders and their friends gained the 



256 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

summit, they broke into new cheers, for there 
below them, within easy sight, were the white 
walls and red-tiled roofs of Santiago de Cuba. 
That was the fight of the first of July. 

An interesting feature of the battle was the 
conduct of Major-General Joseph Wheeler. He 
had been so ill the day before that he had trans- 
ferred the command of the cavalry to General 
Sumner. But when the fighting began he had 
four stout men carry him to the field in a litter, 
and there resumed the direction of the forces. 
And he remained at the front till the day was 
won. 

In the late afternoon, when absolute quiet had 
reigned for an hour, an attempt at advance was 
made by the Spaniards. From their trenches 
half way down the slopes they marched out as if 
to attack the positions held by the Americans; 
and the latter greeted the demonstration with a 
soldier's joy. They had been at a disadvantage 
all morning and had carried breastworks, 
against rifles, and in spite of artillery support. 
Now they thought they were to meet the enemy 
on equal terms, and they started to the conflict 
as to a festival. But the movement of the enemy 
was short-lived. If they ever had entertained 



SERVICE IN CUBA. 257 

the purpose of attack, they reconsidered it, for 
they did not get two hundred yards from their 
trenches until the fire of the Americans met 
them, and they turned and incontinently fled 
back to their cover. Curiously enough, as a 
result of this action. General Shafter is said to 
have decided upon a withdrawal of the American 
troops to a position less exposed. Against his 
judgment was opposed that of General Wheeler, 
who regarded the retrograde movement as in 
every way ill-advised. He urged that the army 
be held in its advanced position, and all the offi- 
cers in command, and certainly all the men in 
arms, seconded his contention. And the retreat 
was not ordered. 

In a paragraph from Colonel Roosevelt's own 
book is found a tribute to General Wheeler's 
judgment at this juncture: "Soon after dark 
General Wheeler came to the front. A very few 
words with him reassured us about retiring. He 
told us not to be under any apprehension, as he 
had sent word to General Shafter there was no 
need of it whatever ; and he was sure we would 
stay where we were until the chance came for 
advance. He was second in command, and to 
him more than to any other man was due the 



258 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

abandonment of the proposal to fall back— a pro- 
posal wbicb, if adopted, would have meant shame 
and disaster. ' ' 

There was desultory fighting thereafter for 
two days, and then a demand for the city's sur- 
render, and a one-sided truce, by virtue of which 
the Americans were not allowed to attack, though 
the Spaniards might if they saw fit, and were pre- 
pared to take punishment for it. They did not 
take advantage of their privilege to any great 
extent, and so there was comparative quiet until 
noon of July 10, when the firing was resumed all 
along the entire Spanish line. It continued for an 
hour, and the Americans leaped to return it. No 
harm was done to the Rough Riders or their com- 
panions in arms, but a good deal of damage was 
inflicted on the enemy. The situation was prac- 
tically a siege, and until the truce was really 
established, every moment was one of watchful 
guarding, and of danger. But after that first 
day's fight Colonel Roosevelt and his men thor- 
oughly understood each other. They knew he 
would share every hardship and danger with 
them, and that he would do everything in his 
power for their maintenance and for their shelter 
and their rest. And he knew they would go 



SEKVICE IN CUBA. 259 

through every peril, that they would suffer un- 
complainingly, and that they would obey his 
every order, even to the death. 

They had suffered for food. Stacks of com- 
missary stores were waiting for them on the 
beach at Daiquiri, for the Government had made 
small provision for bringing it to the front. So 
Colonel Roosevelt rigged up a pack-train after 
the first day 's fighting, when the conditions war- 
ranted taking a few men from the lines. And 
after that the Rough Riders lived better; and 
their spirits as well as their health improved. 

July 17 the city of Santiago surrendered. 
The new Armada had been destroyed by Com- 
modore Schley. The power of Spain in the 
Western world was broken. The work of the 
Rough Riders, and of their active commander, 
was ended. 

General "VVheeler, second in command on the 
island, says in his book, ''The Santiago Cam- 
paign": "The first squadron (in the battle of 
Las Guasimas) was under the command of Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Roosevelt, who deserves great 
credit for the intelligence and courage with which 
he handled his men, ' ' Again, after the battle of 
July 3, General Wheeler forwarded to head- 



260 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

quarters the reports of his subalterns, and makes 
upon one this endorsement : ' ' Colonel Eoosevelt 
and his entire command deserve high commenda- 
tion." The general, being by nature and train- 
ing a soldier, takes occasion in the book men- 
tioned to view the "might have been." After 
the Americans had captured the city, he tried 
to estimate the damage that would have been 
inflicted upon his soldiers if a more stubborn 
defense had been made by the Spaniards. "As 
we rode for the first time into Santiago," he 
says, "we were struck by the excellent manner 
in which the Spanish lines were fortified, and 
more especially by the formidable defenses with 
which they had barricaded the roads. The one 
in question, on which we were traveling, was 
barricaded in no less than four places, said de- 
fenses consisting of an enormous mass of barbed 
iron wire, stretched across the entire width of the 
road. They were not merely single lines of wire, 
but pieces running perpendicularly, diagonally, 
horizontally, and in every other direction, resem- 
bling nothing so much as a huge thick spider- 
web, with an enormous mass in the center. 
Behind this some ten or fifteen feet were barrels 
of an extraordinary size, filled with sand, stones 



SEEVICE IN CUBA. 261 

and concrete, on the tops of which sand-bags 
were placed in such fashion as to leave small 
holes through which the Spaniards could sight 
their guns. It would, indeed, have been a hard 
task for American troops, were they never so 
brave and courageous, to have taken by storm a 
city which was protected by such defenses as 
these. Nothing short of artillery could have 
swept such obstructions out of the way, and even 
then they would have been more or less effective 
because of the narrowness of the road and the 
high banks on each side, which would have pre- 
vented getting the obstructions out of the way. 
Even the streets were intrenched in similar fash- 
ion, the people taking refuge in the upper stories 
of their houses. Had it come to a hand-to-hand 
fight, as at one time was feared, the American 
troops would have suffered a fearful loss, being 
necessarily placed at such a disadvantage. It was 
fortunate, therefore, that the surrender came 
when it did; for otherwise many a brave boy 
who has returned to resume his avocations of 
peace, or to do his duty as a soldier in his native 
land, would have found his last resting-place on 
Cuban soil. ' ' 

Instead of that a series of glorious battles had 



262 THEODOEE KOOSEVELT. 

been won, an honorable peace had been achieved, 
and to Colonel Roosevelt and the Rough Riders 
was left that home-coming for which all the 
nation had prayed. Let no man attempt to de- 
tract from the credit due to the soldiers of the 
regular army, or their officers. Yet it is a matter 
of record that the Rough Riders were equally 
engaged in every fight of great or less magni- 
tude; and the official reports show that the 
casualties in Colonel Roosevelt's regiment were 
both more numerous and more severe than those 
of any of the regulars. That regiment lost more 
officers than any other. It lost more men killed, 
and had more wounded, and fewer missing. It 
very nobly sustained the honor of the American 
volunteer soldier. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

KETURN OF THE REGIMENT. 

THE ROUND ROBIN - ORDERED BACK TO THE UNITED STATES - 
SICK, WOUNDED AND WELL ON THE VOYAGE HOME-LANDING 
OF ROUGH RIDERS AT MONTAUK POINT - ANGELS OF MERCY 
IN THE HOSPITALS-MUSTERED OUT-BACK TO THE OLD LIFE, 
WHERE A ROUGH RIDER MAY RIDE. 

The fighting was over. Spain had felt the 
force of a premonitory blow, and knew her house 
of cards would go down in a night if the strength 
of the young American giant were ever exerted 
to the full against her. The truce was fol- 
lowed with prompt orders for the Rough Riders 
to retire to the hills about El Caney, and go into 
regular camp; for peace was assured. There 
had been no assault on Havana, and the Morro 
Castle at the gate of that harbor had not been 
humbled with the stroke of cannon-shot, as Amer- 
ican spirit had intended should be done. It had 
not been necessary to march the victorious army 
from the province of Santiago to the country 

863 



264 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

north and west. The isles of the sea, the heritage 
of the Spaniard, the present of Columbus to the 
crowns of Castile and Leon, had fallen at one 
blow into the possession of a stronger nation. No 
matter what were the terms of the peace; no 
matter what were the resolutions of Congress 
and the proclamations of executive officers ; when 
General Toral surrendered the city of Santiago 
de Cuba a new realm had been added to the terri- 
tory of the American republic. 

July was the month of rains, and the soldiers 
suffered a good deal from exposure. From 
beginning to end they never had been given the 
wagons which regulations promise those who 
serve in the army. To each regiment are allotted 
twenty-five wagons. The Rough Eiders did not 
always have one. At times they had as many as 
two, but never three. They were compelled to 
organize pack-trains of their own, as has been 
noted in an earlier chapter. But they were liable 
to lose these eveiy day because superior officers 
would see the horses and want them. As a result, 
it had been impossible from the beginning of the 
occupation of the island for Colonel Roosevelt 
to get to the front supplies of clothing or medi- 
cine for his men. On the coast at Daiquiri still 



THE RETURN HOME. 265 

stood heaps of barrels and bales and boxes of 
provisions of every kind that were needed in 
camp. But the problem of getting them over 
the fifteen miles to the front was one that defied 
solution. 

As long as the fighting lasted the men were 
keyed up with excitement, and refused to yield 
to the pain or the weakness that attacked them. 
But when the strain was over they suffered the 
collapse which must in reason follow such an 
expenditure of vitality, and were especially sus- 
ceptible to malaria. If they had received the 
food for which the Government had paid, the 
food which they should have had, it is likely 
the soldiers in Cuba would have come home in 
the best of health. As it was every man ac- 
quainted with the facts must realize that the offi- 
cers were doing very well indeed to get back with 
half their commands. 

The headquarters of the army at Washington 
were a good deal in a quandary as to the best 
disposition to make of the men. Some corre- 
spondents of newspapers, and some of the men 
themselves, with a prurient love for sensation, 
had published in the United States the untruth 
that the men were suffering from yellow fever. 



266 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

It was one of the maladies of Cuban production, 
to escape which the war had been fought. It 
was to provide against the possibility of import- 
ing that undesirable product that many an argu- 
ment for ' ' free Cuba ' ' had been made. The men 
did not have yellow fever at all. There was a 
camp far to the rear where a number of Cubans 
afflicted with this malady were confined. Once 
in a while the doctors in the camps of the Ameri- 
can soldiers would be sure they saw a case of 
genuine yellow fever among the men, and would 
banish the unhappy wight to the hospital at the 
rear. In every such case yellow fever developed. 
Other cases, diagnosed in precisely the same man- 
ner, were held in the shabby camp hospitals, and 
not one of these men was ever afflicted with that 
malady. Every one of them proved to be suf- 
fering from malarial fever, and most of them 
recovered. 

But it was by no means certain that any 
would long remain well. The continually enlarg- 
ing hospitals were being more and more filled 
with soldiers who had not flinched either at 
danger or labor, and who were wholly disabled 
long before they would admit it. Hospital sup- 
plies were inadequate. Actually, no cots were 



THE BETUBN HOME. 267 



delivered until the day before the commands 
sailed from Cuba. It is doubtful if ever bung- 
ling officialdom used an army so shabbily. 

One suggestion from Washington was to 
remove the troops to the high country, the moun- 
tains in the interior of Cuba. That, when there 
were no wagons to serve them ten miles from the 
shore' Then it was suggested to move the 
troops no longer needed for fighting to the level 
land west of Santiago. That was a sugar-cane 
country, subject to heavy rains against which 
the men had no protection. They were better off 
right on the hills of El Caney, where at least the 
water from the torrents that fell hourly could 
run down the gullies and leave the camp un- 
troubled. But every officer knew the one thing 
needed was the removal of the troops back north 
—to American soil. 

They all knew that, but few of them felt like 
telling the War Department what it ought to do. 
Colonel Roosevelt could see no reason why the 
truth should not be told. He knew his rank- 
not in the army alone, but among men, and m 
the hearts of his fellow citizens. So he was one 
of the field-officers who wrote out and signed and 
forwarded to Washington, through General 



268 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Shafter, the ''Round Robin," by which the re- 
moval of the troops from the island, was urged 
as the one means of saving them. 

And three days later the command for the 
removal was received. 

It may seem a curious thing that news of 
an early departure for home will operate as a 
curative for sick men ; but it will. And many a 
man who had been really ill, in whose eyes were 
gathering the shadows which so often eclipse 
vision, arose from his improvised couch at El 
Caney and came to New York a well man. The 
knowledge that they were to be removed was 
medication to every man in the camp. Some 
were recorded as yellow fever patients, and these 
were left on the island. In nearly every case 
they died. Some in equally as bad health were 
taken aboard the transports, and these usually 
recovered. 

August 7 the Rough Riders embarked at the 
Daiquiri iron mines, where they had come ashore 
seven weeks before. It was one of the shortest 
campaigns on record, and the most effective. 
For though peace was not yet declared, it was 
certain the United States could get any terms 
desired. There were better facilities for putting 



THE RETURN HOME. 269 

the men on board than there had been for land- 
ing them, and the transport Miami sailed north 
in the afternoon with its closely stored cargo of 
human freight. The crowding was not nearly 
so great as on the Yucatan, coming down. In 
the first place, there were not so many men. It 
was almost exclusively a passenger list of Rough 
Riders. Some of the space taken up before was 
vacated. Over there in their graves at Las 
Guasimas, or on the sides of the hill of San Juan, 
were men who had pushed about full of health in 
the throng that covered the decks of the Yucatan. 
Some were still in the field-hospitals at El Caney, 
or in the yellow fever circle at the rear, who 
would rather have shared the graves of the fallen 
brave of July 1 than to have missed the trip 
home on the Miami. 

Colonel Roosevelt had been advanced vir- 
tually to the rank of a brigadier-general at the 
close of service on the island, by reason of the 
engagements elsewhere of Colonel Wood, who 
had occupied that position since the truce began. 
And when the transport started on her home- 
ward voyage he was entrusted with policing the 
ship and the management of the men. The ship 
was kept in good sanitary condition, and in spite 



270 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

of the tremors that attacked timid people in the 
United States when they read in sensational 
papers of the yellow fever that the soldiers were 
bringing home, these men were inspected on 
arrival, and at once were permitted to land. 
Their physical condition was one that need ter- 
rify no one ; and it certainly appealed to all that 
was humane in the hearts of their countrymen. 
Shortly after leaving the island, the captain 
of the ship told Colonel Roosevelt that the stokers 
and engineers were inclined to disobey orders. 
A few of them had been drinking intoxicants, 
and there was the beginning of a mutiny among 
them. Colonel Roosevelt went straight at the 
root of the matter. He shrewdly guessed that 
many of his men had brought liquor on board, 
and he assembled them, the same as at roll-call, 
and told them there could be no drinking on the 
ship. There was too much at stake to permit 
such chances to be taken. He would take care 
of all the whisky his men would voluntarily give 
him, and would return it when they landed. 
After they had a chance to make this surrender, 
he would have a search of the ship, and would 
throw overboard all the liquor he found. As 
soon as the soldiers ''broke ranks'* they hurried 



THE RETUKN HOME. 271 

to bring their bottles. The search revealed a 
few other bottles, more or less skilfully hidden, 
and these were consigned to the sea. That was 
the end of the drinking. Then he took a number 
of his most reliable men to the engine-rooms, and 
told the mutinous people there if they failed for 
an instant to obey orders he would put them in 
irons, and set his own men to the task of pro- 
viding power for the ship. * ' I could have drawn 
from the regiment sufficient skilled men to fill 
every position in the entire ship's crew, from 
captain to stoker, ' ' said the Colonel in comment- 
ing on the incident. But there was no further 
need of complaint. The sailors did their full 
duty, and the skilled men, serving in the ranks 
of the volunteer army, were allowed to go back 
to their rest and their pastimes. 

It was a trying voyage, even for the men who 
were well. It was doubly distressing for the 
sick. Besides Colonel Roosevelt but one other 
officer in the regiment had escaped disease. 
Richard Harding Davis has told in admirable 
stories of the pathos of that home-coming for the 
men in * ' sick bay. " As to the others, their occu- 
pations were various. A good many played cards. 
There was some gambling, and the commanding 



272 THEODOKE KOOSEVELT. 

officer knew it. He deprecated the practice, and 
never indulged in it. But he wanted the men to 
have as much occupation and relaxation as was 
possible, and believed that the loss of a month's 
pay would be less of a calamity to the men than 
the imposition of rigid restrictions. And so disci- 
pline was removed so far as was consistent with 
maintaining order and cleanliness. Every even- 
ing dozens of grouj^s would form in every part 
of the ship, and the men who could sing were 
drafted into the service of entertaining their 
comrades. The musical instruments that had 
escaped destruction in the marches and loss in 
the handling of scattered baggage, were wel- 
comed again. There were occasional dances, with 
extemporized adjuncts of dress which should 
distinguish the ''men" from the ''women." 
Occasionally there were courts-martial, in which 
culprits were accused of absurd offenses, and 
tried with all the rigors of a tribunal in actual 
war. Usually the forfeits were to be paid in din- 
ners at some famous cafe in New York, when they 
should have reached "home." 

The Eough Riders had started in with a num- 
ber of mascots. One was a young mountain lion, 
brought by the Arizona men. Another was an 



THE EETURN HOME. 373 

eagle from New Mexico, and a third was a very- 
ugly, but very wise, little dog. All three had 
been lost time and again, but always recovered, 
and they made the return trip with the soldiers, 
the cougar trying continually to make a meal 
off either eagle or canine, and never succeeding. 
The voyage occupied nine days. The only 
death on board was that of a trooper who had 
been indiscreet enough to imbibe a large quan- 
tity of Cuban whisky on the evening of June 30. 
He had not yet recovered next morning when 
the march began. The fatigue and heat were 
too much for him, and he succumbed. He never 
recovered, and on the third day out from Dai- 
quiri he died. His body was wrapped in his 
hammock and covered with the stars and stripes, 
and then the burial service was read over him. 
At its conclusion the flag was lifted, and the 
hammock, weighted, was slipped over the side 
and into the sea. In the evening Colonel Roose- 
velt, making his regular rounds, noticed a cer- 
tain lessening of customaiy activity. There was 
a sombemess on the faces of the men which they 
had not worn even in the tragedy of battle. And, 
at the side of a gun he found a group to which 
one of the troopers was singing a fragment 



274 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

caught from the flotsam of song that spreads 
over the land— 

"We had no costly winding-sheet, 

But we placed two round shot at his feet. 

We wrapped him about in the flag of the brave, 

And he was fit for a soldier 's grave. ' ' 

The selection of Camp Wykoff was probably 
the best that could have been made. It was not 
ideal, and the same lack of preparation was noted 
there as at Daiquiri, and everywhere else in the 
campaign. It is curious to reflect on the moun- 
tains of supplies for which the Government paid, 
and which were never placed at the disposal of 
the men. But that sandy beach toward the 
extreme east end of Long Island was healthy, 
if cool northern breezes, pure air and the wel- 
come of friends could make it so. It is likely 
that a better physical condition resulted from 
their location there. The only criticism is that 
departmental ability seemed so shortened that a 
state of ' * unpreparedness ' ' remained to the very 
end. It is curious that mills had time to manu- 
facture, and railroads had time to deliver, and 
private citizens had time to act, and yet that 
millions of dollars' worth of provisions sorely 
needed never reached the men, or reached them 
only after the need had passed. 



THE RETURN HOME. 275 

The month at Camp Wykoff provided an 
experience which was at least interesting. There 
was policing of camp, and the usual detail of 
barrack-keeping; but the war was over. There 
was no longer even a hope of further service 
about Havana, and no chance for a trip to Porto 
Rico. Spain had been driven from the West 
Indies, and had lost the Philippines as well. 
After five months of service or of waiting, the 
men could hope for nothing better than a return 
to the duties which had engaged them before that 
night in February when the Maine was de- 
stroyed. But there was no lack of occupation as 
the work of disbanding the army went on. For 
one thing, there were a good many horses at 
Camp Wykoff. That whole portion of the Rough 
Riders ' command which had been left at Tampa 
joined the returning veterans, and most of the 
camp equipage and the regimental property 
was once more restored to its owners. In Cuba, 
of course, the title ''Rough Riders" was a mis- 
nomer. The men did not ride, because they had 
no horses. Even Colonel Roosevelt, who had 
taken two horses to the island with him, lost one 
by drowning at the Daiquiri landing, and he 
abandoned the other, little "Texas," just as he 



276 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

started at the head of his men for the rush up 
San Juan hill. So that a regiment that probably 
could have ridden through or over every oppos- 
ing force in the island, had memories only of 
very laborious trudging on foot. But here at the 
eastern end of Long Island they had all the horses 
they wanted. They found the country back of 
their camps strikingly similar to the sand plains 
on which they had ridden before enlistment. 
And they took abundant exercise there. 

The camp, in those days, was the Mecca for 
New York's millions. It seemed to the soldiers 
that all the population of the great city came out 
to see them. The day of privation had passed. 
There was an abundance not only of the substan- 
tial things of life, but of delicacies as well. Every 
mess was enriched with dainty offerings of 
admirers from the city. Every train on the 
shoddy little railroad brought visitors, and every 
visitor seemed to have made it a part of the 
errand to bring some offering * ' for the heroes of 
Santiago. ' ' 

Besides, the men were permitted to go to the 
city whenever their health and prudent discipline 
would permit. And wherever they went in New 
York, with their khaki uniforms, and the insignia 



THE RETURN HOME. 277 

of the Rough Riders, they were most welcome 
guests. They had started to the coast of Cuba, 
from the camp at El Caney, in a state of rags 
and tatters. The clothing issued at the begin- 
ning of their service had been wholly worn out, 
and many of the men went to Daiquiri for 
embarkation absolutely barefoot. At the coast 
they received the clothing that had been sent to 
the island for them, but which incompetence had 
not been able to give further transportation ; so 
that they were fairly dressed when they came 
to their Northern camp. But some had brought 
along the rags of those earlier uniforms, and 
these tattered garments were souvenirs of pro- 
nounced value in the eyes of visitors. Every- 
thing that had been in Cuba with the Rough 
Riders was in demand. Autographs were con- 
stantly sought; and the men from the frontier, 
who were far more clumsy with a pen than with 
a revolver or a lariat, found their simple signa- 
tures were things of value. The more notable 
men among the Rough Riders could have em- 
ployed all their spare time complying with 
requests for autographs; and some of them 
pretty nearly achieved that record. 

There was another phase of the life at Camp 



278 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

Wykoff which cannot be overlooked. It went to 
the deeper things of human life. Here were men 
in the vigor of splendid health, who had gone 
through grievous peril without flinching, men 
who had performed acts of splendid heroism 
and had come back scatheless. But there were 
wounded men, as well. There were men on whom 
disease had set its stamp, and who were fighting 
for a return to that health which they felt was 
their right. There was happiness, and pleasant 
occupation, and enjoyable pastime in the camp; 
but there was suffering, too. And among the 
thousands who came daily to the camp, there 
were very many whose errand was purely one of 
mercy. They left the lighter purpose of self- 
gratification, the whetting of curiosity, for 
others, and went themselves to the tents of pain. 
They brought such food as princes could hardly 
have commanded. They brought eminent physi- 
cians, who gently and nobly added their judg- 
ment and advice to the thoughtful care of the 
regimental surgeons. In many a tent beautiful 
women sat reading to sick soldiers through the 
September afternoons. Everything that care 
and gratitude and appreciation could suggest was 
placed at the disposal of the invalids. 



THE RETURN HOME. 279 

Miss Helen Gould was one of those whose 
benefactions won notice at the time. They were 
different from others simply because they repre- 
sented a greater expenditure of money ; but they 
were of a kind with the service she rendered to 
the soldiers throughout the war. And the thought 
which prompted her to so kindly a series of 
actions was as lofty and pure as mind of man 
can imagine. It was related, in quality, to the 
sentiment which led the sons of the rich to enlist 
in the ranks. If she possessed great wealth, she 
gave as a woman of great wealth could, and so 
simple and genuine was her devotion that she 
won a place in the hearts of the soldiers which 
will hold to the end of life. 

Her act was duplicated, perhaps in lesser 
degree but with like sincerity, by thousands. 
Rich men and women all over the country sent 
money to be expended for the comfort of the men. 
One millionaire sent an entire shipload of ice. 
President McKinley visited the camp with most 
of the members of his cabinet, employing the 
hours in walking through the streets of the ' ' city 
of tents, ' ' talking with the soldiers, encouraging 
those who were sick, making sure that everything 
possible was being done for their comfort, and 



280 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

leaving them with the profound expression of a 
nation 's gratitude. The Secretary of AVar spent 
two days at the camp, sleeping in a tent one night, 
and sharing the experiences of those whose duty 
it was to remain. 

On the day of Secretary Alger's visit a rather 
interesting event took place. Mounted drill had 
continued at intervals through the stay at Mon- 
tauk Point, largely as a measure of giving 
employment and diversion to the men. One day 
while the members of the Third cavalry were 
getting ready for the work, a horse threw a 
trooper, and ran away. It was caught and 
returned, and a number of Rough Riders strolled 
over to see the second attempt. The trooper 
mounted again, and again was thrown. The 
horse was a huge, vicious sorrel, and what is 
known along the Rio Grande as a "bad bucker." 
None of the men of the Third could ride him. 
The Rough Riders jeered and mocked at them, 
and were dared to ride the horse, if they had any 
man in the command who was able. Sergeant 
Darnell was selected, and next day, in presence 
of the Secretary of War, the trial was made. In 
a big, open flat in front of Colonel Roosevelt's 
tent the big sorrel was led, and the whole camp, 




LANDING AT MONTAUK POINT. 
COLONEL ROOSEVELT AND GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER 



THE RETURN HOME. 281 

together with hundreds of visitors, stood about 
watching the contest. The result was that after as 
fine a bit of rough riding as one would care to see, 
in which one scarcely knew whether to won- 
der more at the extraordinary viciousness and 
agile strength of the horse or at the horseman- 
ship and courage of the rider, Darnell came off 
victorious, his seat never once having been 
shaken, 

Colonel Roosevelt tells in graphic language 
of the final scenes of the Rough Riders as an arm 
of the Republic's military strength: ''The last 
night before we were mustered out was spent in 
noisy but entirely harmless hilarity, which I 
ignored. Every form of celebration took place 
in the ranks. A former populist candidate for 
attorney-general in Colorado delivered a fervent 
oration in favor of free silver. A number of the 
college boys sang ; but most of the men gave vent 
to their feelings by means of improvised dances. 
In these the Indians took the lead, pure bloods 
and half-breeds alike, the cowboys and miners 
cheerfully joining in and forming part of the 
howling, grunting rings that went bounding 
about the great fires they had kindled. 

''Next morning Sergeant Wright took down 



282 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

the colors, and Sergeant Guitilias the standard, 
for the last time. The horses, the rifles, the rest 
of the regimental property had been turned in. 
Officers and men shook hands and said good-bye 
to one another, and then they scattered to their 
homes in the North and the South, the few going 
back to the great cities of the East, the many 
turning again to the plains, the mountains and 
the deserts of the West and the strange South- 
west. This was on September 15, the day which 
marked the close of the four months' life of a 
regiment of as gallant fighters as ever wore the 
United States unif oitq. ' ' 

It was a scene never to be forgotten when the 
men filed past Colonel Roosevelt, and took their 
loved commander by the hand. Although the 
subordinate of Colonel Wood, he had been with 
the Rough Riders all the time— every hour of 
every day and night. He had been with them in 
camp, on rations precisely as short as their own, 
as wet and miserable as were they ; he had faced 
bullets with them, he had shared the danger of 
charges, and taken even more than an equal 
allotment of the chances of war. And he had 
brought them home in triumph from a glorious 
campaign. They shook his hand, but they said 



THE RETURN HOME. 283 

little. Generally they looked at him as they 
approached, but let their eyes drop as they 
touched his hand. And then the relation of 
commander and soldier was ended. 

The service had been a little different from 
that obtaining in the regular establishment. Col- 
onel Roosevelt had been a good deal of a dictator, 
when necessary under unusual circumstances. 
He cared little indeed for red tape and 
formalities. Results were all he demanded. He 
had inflicted summary punishment when a case 
required severe discipline, and had remitted sen- 
tence when heroism won favor for the one-time 
delinquent. They were very sure that he had 
administered absolute justice, and had given 
them the benefit of every possible consideration 
They had been * ' resolute to do well, ' ' and he had 
helped them. 

There is an admirable passage at the conclu- 
sion of his book, ' ' The Rough Riders ' ' ; and it so 
fittingly closes this portion of the stoiy that it 
should be read in full : ' ' It is difficult for me to 
withstand the temptation to tell what has befal- 
len some of my men since the regiment dis- 
banded: how McGinty, after spending some 
weeks in Roosevelt hospital in New York with an 



284 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

attack of fever, determined to call upon his cap- 
tain, Woodbury Kane, when he got out, and pro- 
curing a horse rode until he found Kane 's house, 
when he hitched his horse to a lamp-post and 
strolled in ; how Cherokee Bill rnarried a wife in 
Hoboken, and as that pleasant city ultimately 
proved an uncongenial field for his activities, how 
I had to send both himself and his wife out to the 
Territory; how Happy Jack, haunted by the 
social methods obtaining in the best saloons of 
Arizona, applied for the position of 'bouncer- 
out' at the executive mansion when I was 
elected governor, and how I got him a job at 
railroading instead, and finally had to ship him 
back to his own territory as well ; how a valued 
friend from a cow ranch in the remote West 
accepted a pressing invitation to spend a few 
days at the home of another ex-trooper, a New 
Yorker of fastidious instincts, and arrived with 
an umbrella as his only baggage; how poor 
Holderman and Pollock both died and were bur- 
ied with military honors, all of Pollock's tribes- 
men coming to the burial; how Tom Isbell 
joined Buffalo Bill's show, and how on the other 
hand Rowland scornfully refused to remain in 
the East at all, writing to a gallant New Yorker 



THE RETURN HOME. 365 

who had been his bunkie: 'Well, old boy, I'm 
glad I didn't go home with you for them people 
to look at, because I ain 't no buffalo nor a rinoce- 
ros nor a giraffe, and I don't like to be Stared at, 
and you know we didn 't do no hard fighting down 
there. I have been in closer places than that 
right here in Yunited States, that is better men 
to fight than them dam Spaniards.' In another 
letter Rowland tells of the fate of Tom Darnell, 
the rider— he who rode the bucking sorrel of the 
Third cavalry : * There ain 't much news to write 
except that poor old Tom Darnell got killed 
about a month ago. Tom and another fellow had 
a fight, and he shot Tom through the heart and 
Tom was dead when he hit the floor. Tom was 
sure a good old boy, and I sure hated to hear of 
him going, and he had plenty of grit too. No 
man ever called on him for a fight that he didn 't 
get it. ' 

**My men were children of the dragon's 
blood, and if they had no outland foe to fight and 
no outlet for their daring and vigorous energy, 
there was always the chance of their fighting one 
another. But the great majority, if given the 
chance of hard or dangerous work availed them- 
selves of it with the utmost eagerness, and though 



286 THEODOBE ROOSEVELT. 

fever sickened and weakened tliem so that many 
died from it during the few months following 
their return, yet as a whole they are now doing 
fairly well. A few have shot other men or been 
themselves shot; a few ran for office and got 
elected, as Llewellyn and Luna in New Mexico, 
or defeated like Wilcox and Brodie in Arizona. 
Some have been trying hard to get to the Philip- 
pines; some have returned to college or to the 
law, or to the factory, or the counting-room. 
Most of them have gone back to the mine, the 
ranch and the hunting camp; and the great 
majority have taken up the threads of their lives 
where they dropped them when the Maine was 
blown up, and the country called them to arms. ' ' 
Perhaps no better conclusion could be found 
for this part of the recital than an extract from 
Major-General Joseph Wheeler's letter to Colo- 
nel Roosevelt when the army was disbanded. 
After sketching in outline the record of the 
Rough Riders, General Wheeler adds: ''The 
valor displayed by you was not without sacrifice. 
Eighteen per cent., or nearly one in five, of the 
cavalry division fell on the field either killed or 
wounded. We mourn the loss of these heroic 
dead, and a grateful country will always revere 



THE EETURK HOME. 287 

their memory. Whatever may be my fate, wher- 
ever my steps may lead, my heart will always 
burn with increasing admiration for your cour- 
age in action, your fortitude under privation, and 
your constant devotion to duty in its highest 
sense, whether in battle, in bivouac, or upon the 
march. ' * 



CHAPTER XV. 

GOVERNOK OF NEW YORK. 

EMPIRE STATE JUBILANTLY REV/ARDS COLONEL ROOSEVELT WITH 
ITS HIGHEST OFFICE — INAUGURATES REFORM IN EVERY 
BRANCH OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE — ESTABLISHES THE PRIN- 
CIPLE OF STREET FRANCHISE TAXATION — PEWEY DAY IN 
NEW YORK. 

The fame of Roosevelt's Rough Riders had 
given their organizer and leader a popularity in 
the United States second only to that of Admiral 
Dewey, and for some time before he returned to 
New York he had been put forward prominently 
as a candidate for the Governorship of that State 
on the Republican ticket. Governor Frank S. 
Black had been elected by an enormous plurality 
two years previously, and according to all tradi- 
tions should have been renominated. He was set 
aside, however, for the new hero, and in the 
convention at Saratoga held September 27, 
1898, Colonel Roosevelt was nominated with 
great enthusiasm. The friends of Governor 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 



289 



Black had fought bitterly as long as there seemed 
a chance for success. The charge was made that 
Colonel Eoosevelt was ineligible for the nomi- 
nation, as he had relinquished his residence in 
New York when he went to Washington to enter 
the Navy Department. The leading politicians 
were opposed to Colonel Eoosevelt for other 
reasons than those of precedent which they 
offered as an argument for their support of 
Governor Black. They had not forgotten the 
ways of the young man who overturned so many 
precedents on his entrance to the assembly nearly 
twenty years before, the tenacity with which he 
had held to his principles when in the Civil 
Service Commission, nor the quiet firmness with 
which he had refused to obey the demands of 
party leaders while he was president of the 
Police Board. He was not the man politicians 
were seeking. In fact they would have rejoiced 
had he found ranch life so fascinating that he 
could not have given it up at all. He was no 
more entertaining as a writer of wild adventure 
on the frontier than as an actor in the political 
arena ; but the entertainment was of a different 
sort and the men who were serving their coun- 
try for their own good liked the dashing colonel 



290 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

far better as a hero at a distance than as a 
reformer in their assemblies. But the people 
had decided to have Colonel Roosevelt for their 
next Governor and the delegates to the conven- 
tion did not dare deny them. 

Senator Horace White, of Syracuse, was 
chairman of the convention in v^liich Colonel 
Roosevelt was nominated. Judge J. R. Cady, 
of Hudson, nominated Governor Black, and the 
Hon. Chauncey M. Depew presented the name of 
Colonel Roosevelt in the following speech: 

DEPEW 's SPEECH NOMINATING ROOSEVELT. 

^ ' Gentlemen : Not since 1863 has the Repub- 
lican party met in convention when the condi- 
tions of the country were so interesting or so 
critical. Then the emancipation proclamation of 
President Lincoln, giving freedom and citizen- 
ship to four millions of slaves brought about a 
revolution in the internal policy of our Govern- 
ment which seemed to multitudes of patriotic 
men full of the gravest dangers to the Republic. 
The effect of the situation was the sudden and 
violent sundering of the ties which bound the 
present to the past and the future. New prob- 
lems were precipitated upon our statesmen to 
solve, which were not to be found in the text- 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 291 

books of the schools, nor in the manuals of tradi- 
tions of Congress. The one courageous, con- 
structive part which our politics has known for 
half a century solved those problems so success- 
fully that the regenerated and disenthralled 
republic has grown and prospered under its new 
birth of liberty beyond all precedent and every 
prediction. 

' ' Now, as then, the unexpected has happened. 
The wildest dream ever born of the imagination 
of the most optimistic believer in our destiny 
could not foresee when McKinley was elected 
two years ago the on-rushing torrent of events 
of the past three months. We are either to be 
submerged by this break in the dikes erected by 
Washington about our Government, or we are to 
find by the wise utilization of the conditions 
forced upon us how to be safer and stronger 
within our old boundaries, and to add incalcula- 
bly to American enterprise and opportunity by 
becoming master of the sea, and entering with 
the surplus of our manufactures the markets of 
the world. We cannot retreat or hide. We must 
'ride the waves and direct the storm.* A war 
has been fought and won, and vast possessions, 
near and far away, have been acquired. In the 



292 THEODOEE EOOSEVELT. 

short space of oue hundred and thirteen days 
politicians and parties have been forced to meet 
new questions and to take sides u^Don startling 
issues. The face of the whole world has been 
changed. The maps of yesterday are obsolete. 
Columbus, looldng for the Orient and its fabled 
treasures, sailed four hundred years ago into the 
land-locked harbor of Santiago, and to-day his 
spirit sees his bones resting under the flag of a 
new and great country, which has found the way 
and conquered the outposts, and is knocking at 

the door of the farthest East 

''The wife of a cabinet officer told me that 
when Assistant Secretary Roosevelt announced 
that he had determined to resign and raise a regi- 
ment for the war, some of the ladies in the admin- 
istration thought it their duty to remonstrate 
with him. They said : ' Mr. Roosevelt, you have 
six children, the youngest a few months old, and 
the eldest not yet in the teens. While the country 
is full of young men who have no such responsi- 
bilities and are eager to enlist, you have no right 
to leave the burden upon your wife of the care, 
support, and bringing up of that family. ' Roose- 
velt 's answer was a Roosevelt answer: 'I have 
done as much as any one to bring on this war. 



GOVEENOR OF NEW YOEK. 293 

because I believed it must come, and tbe sooner 
the better, and now that the war has come I have 
no right to ask others to do the fighting and stay 
at home myself. ' 

' ' The regiment of Rough Riders was an origi- 
nal American suggestion, and to demonstrate 
that patriotism and indomitable courage are 
common to all conditions of American life. The 
same great qualities are found under the slouch 
hat of the cowboy and the elegant imported tile 
of New York's gilded youth. Their mannerisms 
are the veneers of the West and the East ; their 
manhood is the same. 

"In that hot and pest-cursed climate of Cuba 
officers had opportunities for protection from 
miasma and fever which were not possible for 
the men. But the Rough Riders endured no 
hardships nor dangers which were not shared 
by their colonel. He helped them dig the ditches ; 
he stood beside them in the deadly dampness of 
the trenches. No floored tent for him if his com- 
rades must sleep on the ground and under the 
sky. In that world-famed charge of the Rough 
Riders through the hail of shot and up the hill 
of San Juan their colonel was a hundred feet in 
advance. The bullets whistling by him are 



294 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

rapidly thinning the ranks of those desperate 
fighters. The colonel trips and falls and the line 
wavers, but in a moment he is up again, waving 
his sword, climbing and shouting. He bears a 
charmed life. He climbs the barbed-wire fence 
and plunges through, yelling, 'Come on, boys; 
come on, and we will lick hell out of them. ' The 
moral force of that daring cowed and awed the 
Spaniards, and they fled from their fortified 
heights and Santiago was ours. 

"Colonel Roosevelt is the typical citizen-sol- 
dier. The sanitaiy condition of our army in 
Cuba might not have been known for weeks 
through the regular channels of inspection and 
report to the various departments. Here the 
citizen in the colonel overcame the official routine 
and reticence of the soldier. His graphic letter 
to the Government and the round robin he ini- 
tiated brought suddenly and sharply to our atten- 
tion the frightful dangers of disease and death, 
and resulted in our boys being brought imme- 
diately home. He may have been subject to 
court-martial for violating the articles of war, 
but the humane impulses of the people gave him 
gratitude and applause. 

" It is seldom in political conflicts, when new 



GOVEKNOE OF NEW YORK. 295 

and unexpected issues have to be met and de- 
cided, that a candidate can be found who per- 
sonifies the popular and progressive side of these 
issues. "Representative men move the masses to 
enthusiasm and are more easily understood than 
measures. Lincoln, with his immortal declara- 
tion, made at a time when to make it assured his 
defeat by Douglas for the United States Senate, 
that ' a house divided against itself cannot stand. 
I believe this Government cannot endure perma- 
nently half-slave and half- free,' embodied the 
anti-slavery doctrine. Grant, with Appomattox 
and the parole of honor to the Confederate army 
behind him, stood for the perpetuity of union and 
liberty. McKinley, by his long and able advo- 
cacy of its principles, is the leading spirit for the 
protection of American industries. For this 
year, for this crisis, for the voters of the Empire 
State, for the young men of the country and the 
upward, onward and outward trend of the United 
States, the candidate of candidates is the hero of 
Santiago, the idol of the Rough Riders— Colonel 
Theodore Roosevelt. ' ' 

There were other speeches for the candidates, 
and then came the call of the roll. The count 
stood seven hundred and fifty-three votes for 



296 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

Koosevelt and two hundred and eighteen for 
Black. Judge Cady, who had placed Governor 
Black in nomination, immediately moved to make 
the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt unanimous, 
and Senator Hobart Krum, of Schoharie, who 
had been one of Governor Black's chief advisers, 
assured harmony in the party hj sa^dng: ''On 
behalf of Governor Black and on behalf of every 
delegate who voted for him in this convention I 
say they will stand by the nomination of Colonel 
Roosevelt, as Colonel Roosevelt has stood by the 
country. More than that, we will take the execu- 
tive chair for Colonel Roosevelt as he took the 
heights at San Juan. ' ' This was very eloquent, 
but the sequel proved that Colonel Roosevelt was 
himself obliged to go into the campaign and lead 
the forces if he wished to see victory perching 
upon his banner. 

When the nomination was made, Colonel 
Roosevelt went in to win as he had always done, 
once he had decided to make the race. The cam- 
paign was as picturesque and as full of surprises 
as even the Gascon comrades of the hero of Las 
Guasimas could have desired. B. B. Odell, 
Chairman of the State Committee and since Gov- 
ernor of New York, was opposed to Colonel 



GOVEKNOR OF NEW YORK. 297 

Roosevelt's stumping the State in his own behalf. 
But the people wanted to see the Rough Rider 
and refused to show any enthusiasm for other 
speakers. It soon became apparent that if there 
was to be any " rousing of the hosts " in the 
campaign Colonel Roosevelt would have to do 
the rousing and the consent of the committee was 
reluctantly given for the candidate to make a 
tour of the State. The meetings that followed 
were a surprise to the oldest campaigners. The 
general apathy that had existed in the opening 
days of the campaign changed to the wildest 
enthusiasm. Colonel Roosevelt, by nature force- 
ful, direct, and theatrical in his manner and 
method, went backward and forward, up and 
down New York, accompanied by a few of his 
Rough Riders, dressed in their khaki uniforms. 
These cowboys made speeches, telling usually 
how much they thought of their Colonel, and 
recounting incidents illustrative of his kindness, 
good-fellowship, camaraderie and brave deeds. 
The tour was one of the most successful political 
ventures ever attempted in New York State, and 
gave the party managers a new conception of 
the man who seemed destined to win in spite of 
them. Colonel Roosevelt was elected over 



298 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

Augustus Van Wyck, candidate on the Demo- 
cratic ticket, and the scion of another old Dutch 
family, by a plurality of about seventeen thou- 
sand votes. 

In his conduct of the governorship Colonel 
Roosevelt was often at odds with Senator Piatt 
and the leaders of the party in the State. But 
while he made demands on them that would have 
caused active rebellion with a less pronounced 
character in the chair, no open breach occurred 
and the Governor was able to carry through 
many measures on which he had set his heart. 
He nominated men of his own selection for the 
Department of Public Works— which had been 
the source of great scandal,— and for Adju- 
tant-General and Surrogate of New York 
county. These men were selected for their 
special fitness to correct the evils in the office 
to which they were appointed, and were given 
the places against the claims of the party 
leaders ' choice for the same positions. Efforts to 
secure the passage of a bill to improve the Civil 
Service in the State and to change the police 
system in New York city were fathered by Gov- 
ernor Roosevelt. While president of the Police 
Board of that city he had discovered that the 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 299 

legislation secured by the macliine politicians 
immediately after tlie new board was appointed 
to office, under tlie name of the "bi-partisan'* or 
Lexow law, was designed to make it difficult for 
that board to get effective action. It modeled 
the government of tlie police force somewhat on 
the lines of the Polish parliament, providing for 
a four-headed board, so that it was difficult to 
get a majority, anyhow. "But," declares the 
author of "American Ideals," "lest we should 
get such a majority, it gave each member power 
to veto the actions of his colleagues in certain 
very important matters ; and, lest we should do 
too much when we were unanimous, it provided 
that the chief of police, our nominal subordinate, 
should have entirely independent action in the 
most important matters, and should be i^racti- 
cally irremovable, except for proved corruption ; 
so that he was responsible to nobody. The 
mayor was similarly hindered from removing 
any Police Commissioner, so that when one of 
our colleagues began obstructing the work of the 
board, and thwarting its efforts to improve the 
force, the mayor strove in vain to turn him out. 
In short there was a complete divorce of power 
and responsibility, and it was exceedingly diffi- 



300 THEODOEE KOOSEVELT. 

cult either to do anything, or to place anywhere 
the responsibility for not doing it. ' ' 

In Governor Eoosevelt's endeavor to secure 
legislation which should remedy this mistake, 
and so further the efforts of the Police Board 
instead of being a hindrance to them, he was 
seconded by Senator Piatt, who pushed the 
measures, but through the dereliction of Repub- 
lican Senators the bills failed of passage. It was 
the hope that he might work these and other 
important reforms that made Governor Eoose- 
velt so anxious for a second term and prompted 
him to fight so hard against being nominated for 
the vice-presidency later on. In fact he declared 
openly when that purpose was suggested that 
he would rather retire to private life than to 
be vice-president, qualifying that statement by 
saying ' ' that he wished sincerely to be reelected 
Governor of New York because there were things 
to be done there that he felt he could, and ought 
to do." 

Among the achievements of Governor Roose- 
velt while Governor, was that of reforming the 
administration of the canals, making the Canal 
Commission non-partisan, and the application 
of the merit system in county offices. But the 



GOVEENOR OF NEW YORK. 



301 



measure that awakened the fiercest opposition, 
both without and within his part}^ was one 
intended to make the great corporations of the 
State pay their share of the general taxation. 
By a special message he induced the legislature 
in 1899, at the end of the session, to pass an act 
taxing as real estate the values of railroad and 
other franchises to use public streets. Corpora- 
tions and Republican leaders protested, but the 
Governor said he would sign the bill as it stood 
unless they could improve it without destroying 
its essential features. 

The fight over this measure was one of the 
most remarkable in the annals of legislation. 
Never was greater pressure brought to bear 
upon a body of men to force them to defeat an 
act that, in its every essential, attempted to place 
a fair and honest division of the burdens of the 
State upon rich and poor alike. But the great 
corporations had so long, through the use of 
an immense corruption fund, been able to escape 
anything like just taxation, that an efPort to 
force them to pay their share for the protection 
afforded them by the Government seemed to 
them like an encroachment on their rights. To 
attempt the passage of a bill that antagonized all 



302 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

the great corporations of tlie State of New York, 
and more than incidentally threatened those of 
all other States through the precedent, if it 
should be established, required a faith in his own 
prowess seldom found in public men. Governor 
Roosevelt seems not only to have had faith in 
his power to accomplish the needed legislation 
against all the odds, but to have resolved that 
the legislature should not escape doing its duty. 
He called an extra session, secured the passage 
of the bill in a modified form, and established the 
principle of street franchise legislation. And 
when the bill became a law he saw that it was 
enforced so that the State of New York was 
richer by many millions, and the burdens of taxa- 
tion in a measure shifted from the shoulders of 
the poor to the pockets of the rich. Governor 
Roosevelt also gave his aid to the Tenement Com- 
mission in its work for the betterment of the poor 
in New York, and in breaking up the sweat-shops 
through the rigid enforcement of the factory law. 

The remarkable popularity of Roosevelt as 
Governor was clearly shown at the time of the 
demonstration in New York in honor of Admiral 
Dewey in 1899. 

For a week New York city was the Mecca of 



GOVERNOK OF NEW YORK. 303 

hero-worshipers. Enthusiasm ran to a very 
frenzy of patriotic pride and the gray old sailor 
had his reward in a nation's praise. But it was 
observed that when the brilliant procession rep- 
resenting the army and the navy had passed 
along between the walls of cheers, the sounds 
were fairly lost in the shouts which burst from 
thousands of throats, as from one, when Roose- 
velt passed. 

He was dressed in the sober garments of his 
citizenhood, and was in striking contrast to the 
plumed and glittering warriors in front and rear. 
But he sat his brown horse with a trooper 's ease, 
and although he seemed to many only a modest 
and peaceful gentleman, something stirred, at 
his coming, in the hearts of the men and women 
along the line of march— some emotion, untrans- 
latable except by cheers. 

It was the same the day the victorious squad- 
ron sailed around New York harbor through a 
sea of dipping flags. The battle-ships moved in 
stately parade between saluting forts. Multi- 
tudes hurrahed from the shore and from all man- 
ner of craft afloat in the waters. But when a 
certain, ordinary East river steamer appeared 
in line with that black-coated figure leaning 



304 THEODORE KOOSEVELT. 

against the rail, the Olymijia herself, with the 
Admiral in full sight upon her bridge, could not 
hold the attention of the people. 

** Roosevelt! Roosevelt!" they cried; until 
the Governor left his place and went below to 
keep those loyal voices from unthinking dis- 
courtesy toward the guest. 

One quality which distinguishes President 
Roosevelt from all his predecessors, except Lin- 
coln, is his keen and saving sense of humor. 
There never was a great and solemn ceremonial 
that did not have an element of comedy. x\nd this 
man shows his delightful human side in the 
ready appreciation he has of a joke or an absurd 
situation. Sometimes this boyish desire to break 
into laughter proves annoying to himself; but 
his friends hold him dearer for it. 

The presentation of a golden loving cup from 
the city of New York to the victor of Manila bay 
was one of the important features of the celebra- 
tion. The morning following the water carnival, 
and countless other entertainments in his honor, 
found the hero weary and the skies coldly gray. 
The ceremony was appointed for nine o'clock 
but by seven a vast crowd had gathered and the 
space across from the city hall was filled with 



GOVEENOE OF NEW YOEK. 305 

the school children of Greater New York; each 
child with the notes of " America " caged in 
its little throat waiting but the signal to soar 
away. From a height by nine o 'clock the crowd 
looked like a field of clover in bloom, set shiver- 
ing by a cold breeze. Another hour and a dreary 
drizzle had begun to divert the attention of the 
crowd as a whole, from its aching feet to its 
defenseless head. No one could have gone home 
had he so desired. That concrete mass gave no 
chance for individual independence. In their 
flimsy frocks the little people still waited; but 
the song was in the clutch of croup, and never 
found its wings. 

Then the waiting was over. Admiral Dewey 
and the gallant gentlemen of his own and other 
fleets arrived with the great landsmen. General 
Nelson A. Miles and General Joseph Wheeler 
and were met by Governor Roosevelt and Mayor 
Van Wyck on the platform over the steps of the 
city hall. All but the mayor faced the crowd. 
That gentleman, having his speech to make to the 
hero of the day, faced Dewey. He drew the 
manuscript from his pocket; and the moment 
Roosevelt saw its bulk a smile flickered over his 
features, only to be quickly suppressed and 



306 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

replaced with an expression in keeping with the 
seriousness of the occasion. The Admiral, more 
fatigued with the honors than he had been by his 
matin fights at sea, looked as bored and sheepish 
as any bluff and valiant old soldier will when 
he has to stand and face the music of his own 
praise. He gnawed his gray mustache and 
gazed ahead in nervous agony. He stood on 
one foot and then the other, and finally, as the 
mayor read on and on, the subject of his elo- 
quence gave vent to a sigh so dejected and pro- 
found that Roosevelt's face quivered again with 
an irrepressible smile. It was plain that he was 
longing to laugh while he was trying to repress 
the inclination. Then one of those unfortunate 
incidents occurred. A stranger, a spectator, sud- 
denly caught his eyes and in that glance he broke 
down and burst into a laughter. It was over in 
a minute, and by the time the cup was really in 
the great sailor's hand the Governor was again 
all dignity. But that boyish laugh in the driz- 
zle and chill of that day is a heartsome thing to 
remember. 

Colonel Roosevelt, as Governor of New York, 
continued to keep in the public eye, as he had 
always done in every other position he had ever 



GOVEKNOR OF NEW YORK. 307 

held from the day of his election to the legislature 
of his native State. He was one of the most 
conspicuous figures in the country and his 
admirers freely prophesied for him the highest 
place in the gift of the people. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

EOOSEVELT IN CHICAGO. 

OUEST OF HONOR AT THE HAMILTON CLUB APPOMATTOX DAY 
BANQUET— WONDERFUL MEMORY SHOWN IN HIS RECOGNITION 
OF INDIVIDUAL ROUGH RIDERS — CHARACTERISTIC INCIDENTS 
OF THE MAN — FIRST ENUNCIATION OF THE GOSPEL OF A 
STRENUOUS LIFE. 

Governor Roosevelt 's executive abilities were 
so clearly demonstrated by his acts before he had 
been a year in the Governor's chair that he 
became a pronounced factor in the sum of presi- 
dential possibilities. No slate was made without 
his name in the list. President McKinley was 
still the idol of a great majority of the people, 
but the advocates of a more virile administration 
were not satisfied with his pacific measures and 
turned naturally to the more active and out- 
spoken Governor of New York. The West was 
anxious to see and hear more of the man who had 
defied the rulers in his own party while clinging 
to all the better traditions of that party. It would 
no doubt have given great pleasure to the politi- 

308 



IN CHICAGO. 309 

cians of the Senator Piatt school, had Governor 
Roosevelt followed the lead of Mr. Curtis, editor 
of Harper's Weekly, and other pronounced 
reformers, and gone into an independent fight 
outside party lines. There he would not have 
been so dangerous to their plans. But this Gov- 
ernor Roosevelt declined to do. He held that to 
accomplish anything worth while a man must be 
connected with some powerful organization. If 
the Republican party had faults, and that it did 
have serious faults he had proven over and over 
again, he believed in correcting them, not in 
attempting to destroy the whole structure. 

At this time the Hamilton Club, of Chicago, 
resolved to answer the demand of the middle 
West to hear Governor Roosevelt, and at the 
same time secure the honor of bringing him 
prominently before the people as a possible can- 
didate for the presidency. A delegation of the 
club was therefore sent to New York to invite 
Governor Roosevelt to be the guest of honor at 
the Appomattox Day banquet, to be given by the 
organization April 10, 1899, at the Auditorium. 
Mr. Roosevelt graciously accepted, and named as 
the subject of his address * ' The Strenuous Life. ' ' 
The other speakers were General John C. Black, 



310 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

*' Grant"; Honorable Even E. Settle, of Ken- 
tucky, *'Lee"; Postmaster-General Charles 
Emory Smith, ' ' The Union. ' ' The toast-master 
was Mr. Hope Reed Cody, president of the Ham- 
ilton Club. Preparations were made to entertain 
the distinguished guests on a large and sump- 
tuous scale and the banquet proved to be a most 
noteworthy affair. 

Governor Roosevelt arrived in the city on the 
evening preceding the banquet. A committee of 
the club met his train at Englewood and escorted 
the guest of honor to the city. At all the stations 
along the route the people were gathered in 
great numbers and the hero of the Spanish- Amer- 
ican War was cheered to the echo whenever he 
appeared. At the station were hundreds of dis- 
tinguished citizens wearing Hamilton Club 
badges, and a special reception committee of the 
most representative citizens was awaiting him. 
There was also a little company of six Rough 
Riders, who were then residents of Chicago. 
They wore their faded khaki uniforms that had 
seen service in Cuba. They were citizens of the 
humbler class and were given rather an incon- 
spicuous lolace among the more prosperous and 
dignified representatives of the wealthy clubs 



IN CHICAGO. 311 

who were waiting to receive a possible President. 
As Governor Roosevelt stepped to the platform 
when the train stopped in the station his eye 
caught sight of the dust-stained uniforms and 
the cross sabers of the First United States Volun- 
teer Cavalry in the campaign hats of his former 
comrades, crowded far to the rear of the waiting 
assembly. He waved his hand to them and, 
ignoring the proffered cards of the distinguished 
reception committee, shouldered his way through 
the crowd until he could grasp the hands of the 
Rough Riders. ' ' How are you, boys ! " ' ' Basil, 
old man, I 'm glad to see you. ' ' Each in turn he 
called by name and shook heartily by the hand. 
He seemed quite content to chat with them, for- 
getful of the anxious committees who were wait- 
ing to escort him to his carriage and through the 
city. '^Come over to the Auditorium and have 
a visit, ' ' he called as he was forced to turn away. 
And later, in the richly furnished parlors of that 
magnificent building, ne gave more attention to 
those men, who would have found entrance into 
the polite circles of Chicago more difficult than 
to the blockhouse atop of San Juan hill, than to 
the wealthiest and most distinguished of his 
admirers. 



312 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

Tlie banquet was one of the largest ever given 
in Chicago. The great Auditorium theater, in 
which it was held, was a mass of color and light. 
The decorations were all suggestive of a reunited 
union. President Hope Reed Cody, in introduc- 
ing the speakers, said : 

''Ladies and Grentlemen,— Fellow Americans : 
The Hamilton Club welcomes you and joins you 
in extending most cordial greetings to our hon- 
ored guests. As an organization the Hamilton 
Club is not ashamed of its partisanship, but it is 
proud of its patriotism. It stands not for candi- 
dates, not for the selfish ambitions of any man, 
but for undying principle. In the past it has 
many times found great pleasure in calling 
together vast audiences of Chicago citizens, in 
the heat of bitterly contested political battles, and 
discussing with them party policies, upon which 
we could not all agree. To-night it finds infi- 
nitely greater pleasure in having brought to- 
gether this magnificent concourse of patriotic 
citizens, knowing that to the theme of this even- 
ing 's celebration every heart in this hall beats in 
unison. 

' ' Thirty-four years ago to-night it would, of 
course, have been impossible for the two sections 



IN CHICAGO. 313 

of the country to join in celebrating Appomattox 
Day, but every day during the past generation 
the North and the South have been slowly but 
surely coming closer and closer and closer 
together, until in the year 1898 the attack of a 
foreign enemy tore down the curtain of sectional 
prejudice, and disclosed a united country. 

' ' Thus is it possible for us to-night to enter- 
tain side by side at this banquet board, this Gen- 
eral of the Northern army (General Black), this 
true representative of the loyal South (Mr. Set- 
tle), this statesman (Mr. Smith), member of the 
President's official family, representative here of 
the great patriot whose head and heart have so 
wisely guided us during the troublesome months 
just past, the President of these truly United 
States, William McKinley; and this American 
soldier, who was, during the Spanish War, the 
most notable and typical representative of the 
united arms, our honorary member, who, though 
dealing in ideals in American politics, is ever 
practical, whose leadership the Hamilton Club 
delights to follow, Colonel Eoosevelt, the Gov- 
ernor of New York." 

No man was ever given a more enthusiastic 
welcome than Governor Eoosevelt on this occa- 



314 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

sion. It was fully twenty minutes after he arose 
to speak before the cheeryig ceased. In his 
address Mr. Roosevelt stated clearly his position 
at that time on the questions that were dividing 
the parties of the country and forming new com- 
binations in the political world. At this time, 
too, he enunciated the gospel of work with which 
his name has since been so closely associated. 
Mr. Eoosevelt spoke as follows : 

' ' In speaking to you, men of the greatest city 
of the West, men of the State which gave to the 
country Lincoln and Grant, men who preemi- 
nently and distinctly embody all that is most 
American in the American character, I wish to 
preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the 
doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil 
and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that 
highest form of success which comes, not to the 
man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man 
who does not shrink from danger, from hardship 
or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the 
splendid ultimate triumph. 

"A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace 
which springs merely from lack either of desire 
or of power to strive after great things, is as 
little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I 



IN CHICAGO. 315 



ask only that what every self-respecting Ameri- 
can demands from himself, and from his sons, 
shall be demanded of the American nation as a 
whole. Who among you would teach your boys 
that ease, that peace is to be the first considera- 
tion in their eyes-to be the ultimate goal after 
which they strive! You men of Chicago have 
made this city great, you men of Illinois have 
done your share, and more than your share, m 
making America great, because you neither 
preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work 
yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. 
If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will 
teach your sons that though they may have 
leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for 
wisely used leisure merely means that those who 
possess it, being free from the necessity of work- 
ing for their livelihood, are all the more bound 
to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work 
in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, m 
historical research-work of the type we most 
need in this country, the successful carrying out 
of which reflects most honor upon the nation. 
We do not admire the man of timid peace. We 
admire the man who embodies victorious effort; 
the man who never wrongs his neighbor ; who is 



316 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

prompt to help a friend; but wlio lias those 
virile qualities necessary to win in the stern 
strife of actual life. It is hard to fail ; but it is 
worse never to have tried to succeed. In this 
life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom 
from effort in the present, merely means that 
there has been stored up effort in the past. A 
man can be freed from the necessity of work only 
by the fact that he or his fathers before him 
have worked to good j)urpose. If the freedom 
thus purchased is used aright, and the man still 
does actual work, though of a different kind, 
whether as a writer or a general, whether in the 
field of politics or in the field of exploration and 
adventure, he shows he deserves his good for- 
tune. But if he treats this period of freedom 
from the need of actual labor as a period not of 
preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though 
perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that 
he is simply a cumberer on the earth 's surface ; 
and he surely unfits himself to hold his own 
with his fellows, if the need to do so should again 
arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a 
very satisfaetory life, and, above all, it is a life 
which ultimately unfits those who follow it for 
serious work in the world. 



IN CHICAGO. 317 

' ' As it is with the individual, so it is with the 
nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is 
the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is 
the nation that has a glorious history. Far better 
it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious 
triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than 
to take rank with those poor spirits who neither 
enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in 
the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor 
defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union 
had believed that peace was the end of all things, 
and war and strife the worst of all things, and 
had acted up to their belief, we would have saved 
hundreds of thousands of lives ; we would have 
saved hundreds of millions of dollars. More- 
over, besides saving all the blood and treasure 
we then lavished, we would have prevented the 
heart-break of many women, the dissolution of 
many homes; and we would have spared the 
country those months of gloom and shame, when 
it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. 
We could have avoided all this suffering simply 
by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus 
avoided it we would have shown that we were 
weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among 
the great nations of the earth. Thank God for 



318 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who 
upheld the wisdom of Lincoln and bore sword or 
rifle in the armies of Grant ! Let us, the children 
of the men who proved themselves equal to the 
mighty days— let us, the children of the men who 
carried the great Civil War to a triumphant con- 
clusion, praise the God of our fathers that the 
ignoble counsels of peace were rejected ; that the 
suffering and loss, the blackness or sorrow and 
despair, were unflinchingly faced, and the years 
of strife endured; for in the end the slave was 
freed, the Union restored, and the mighty Amer- 
ican Republic placed once more as a helmeted 
queen among nations. 

' ' We of this generation do not have to face a 
task such as that our fathers faced, but we have 
our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform 
them. We cannot, if we would, play the part of 
China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble 
ease within our borders, taking no interest in 
what goes on beyond them ; sunk in a scrambling 
commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the 
life of aspiration, of toil and risk ; busying our- 
selves only with the wants of our bodies for the 
day; until suddenly we should find, beyond a 
shadow of question, what China has already 



IN CHICAGO. 319 

found, that in this world the nation that has 
trained itself to a career of unwarlike and iso- 
lated ease is bonnd in the end to go down before 
other nations which have not lost the manly and 
adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really 
great people, we must strive in good faith to 
play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid 
meeting great issues. All that we can determine 
for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well 
or ill. Last year we could not help being brought 
face to face with the problem of war with Spain. 
All we could decide was whether we should 
shrink like cowards from the contest, or enter into 
it as beseemed a brave and high-spirited people ; 
and, once in, whether failure or success should 
crown our banners. So it is now. We cannot 
avoid the responsibilities that confront us in 
Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines. 
All we can decide is whether we shall meet them 
in a way that will redound to the national credit, 
or whether we shall make of our dealings with 
these new problems a dark and shameful page 
in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all 
merely amounts to dealing with them badly. 
We have a given problem to solve. If we under- 
take the solution, there is of course, always dan- 



320 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

ger that we may not solve it aright ; but to refuse 
to undertake the solution simply renders it cer- 
tain that we cannot possibly solve it aright. The 
timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts 
his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost 
the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant 
man and the man of dull mind, whose soul is 
incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills 
"stern men with empires in their brains"— all 
these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation 
undertake its new duties ; shrink from seeing us 
build a navy and army adequate to our needs; 
shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's 
work, by bringing order out of chaos in the great, 
fair tropic islands from which the valor of our 
soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. 
These are the men who fear the strenuous life, 
who fear the only national life which is really 
worth leading. They believe in that cloistered 
life which saps the hardy virtues in a nation, 
as it saps them in the individual; or else they 
are wedded to that base spirit of gain and greed 
which recognizes in commercialism the be-all and 
end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, 
though an indispensable element, it is after all 
but one of the many elements that go to make up 



IN CHICAGO. 321 

true national greatness. No country can long 
endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the 
material prosperity which comes from thrift, 
from business energy and enterprise, from hard 
unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activ- 
ity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly 
great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. 
All honor must be paid to the architects of our 
material prosperity; to the great captains of 
industry who have built our factories and our 
railroads ; to the strong men who toil for wealth 
with brain or hand ; for great is the debt of the 
nation to these and their kind. But our debt is 
yet greater to the men whose highest type is to 
be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier 
like Grant. They showed by their lives that they 
recognized the law of work, the law of strife; 
they toiled to win a competence for themselves 
and those dependent upon them ; but they recog- 
nized that there were yet other and even loftier 
duties— duties to the nation and duties to the 
race. 

"We cannot sit huddled within our own bor- 
ders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage 
of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what 
happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat 



322 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

even its own end ; for as the nations grow to have 
ever wider and wider interests and are brought 
into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold 
our own in the struggle for naval and commercial 
suiDremacy, we must huild up our power without 
our own borders. We must build the Isthmian 
canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage 
wliich will enable us to have our say in deciding 
the destiny of the oceans of the East and the 
West. 

''So much for the commercial side. From 
the standpoint of international honor, the argu- 
ment is even stronger. The guns that thundered 
off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, 
but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we 
drove out a mediaeval tyranny only to make room 
for savage anarchy, we had better not have begun 
the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that 
we have no duty to perform and can leave to their 
fates the islands we have conquered. Such a 
course would be the course of infamy. It would 
be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched 
islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier 
power would have to step in and do the work; 
and we would have shown ourselves weaklings, 
unable to carry to successful completion the 



IN CHICAGO. 323 

labors that great and high-spirited nations are 
eager to undertake. 

' ' The work must be done. We cannot escape 
our responsibility, and if we are worth our salt, 
we shall be glad of the chance to do the work— 
glad of the chance to show ourselves equal to one 
of the great tasks set modern civilization. But 
let us not deceive ourselves as to the importance 
of the task. Let us not be misled by vainglory 
into underestimating the strain it will put on our 
powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own 
self-respect, face the responsibilities with proper 
seriousness, courage and high resolve. We must 
demand the highest order of integrity and abil- 
ity in our public men who are to grapple with 
these new problems. We must hold to a rigid 
accountability those public servants who show 
unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or 
inability to rise to the high level of the new 
demands upon our strength and our resources. 

' ' Of course, we must remember not to judge 
any public servant by any one act, and especially 
should we beware of attacking the men who are 
merely the occasions and not the causes of disas- 
ter. Let me illustrate what I mean by the army 
and the navy. If twenty years ago we had gone 



324 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

to war, we should have found the navy as abso- 
lutely unprepared as the army. At that time our 
ships could not have encountered with success 
the fleets of Spain any more than nowadays we 
can put untrained soldiers, no matter how brave, 
who are armed with archaic black powder wea- 
pons against well-drilled regulars armed with 
the highest type of modern repeating rifle. But 
in the early 80 's the attention of the nation 
became directed to our naval needs. Congress 
most wisely made a series of appropriations to 
build up a new navy, and under a succession of 
able and patriotic secretaries, of both political 
parties, the navy was gradually built up, until 
its material became equal to its sjDlendid person- 
nel, with the result that last summer it leaped to 
its proper place as one of the most brilliant and 
formidable fighting navies in the entire world. 
We rightly pay all honor to the men controlling 
the navy at the time it won these great deeds, 
honor to Secretary Long and Admiral Dewey, 
to the captains who handled the ships in action, 
to the daring lieutenants who braved death in 
the smaller craft, and to the heads of bureaus at 
Washington who saw that the ships were so 
commanded, so armed, so equipped, so well 



IN CHICAGO. 325 

engined, as to insure the best results. But let 
us also keep ever in mind that all of this would 
not have availed if it had not been for the wis- 
dom of the men who during the preceding fif- 
teen years had built up the navy. Keep in mind 
the secretaries of the navy during those years; 
keep in mind the Senators and Congressmen who 
by their votes gave the money necessary to build 
and to armor the ships, to construct the great 
guns, and to train the crews; remember also 
those who actually did build the ships, the 
armor and the guns; and remember the admi- 
rals and captains who handled battle-ship, cruiser 
and torpedo-boat on the high seas, alone and in 
squadrons, developing the seamanship, the gun- 
nery and the power of acting together, which 
their successors utilized so gloriously at Manila 
and off Santiago. And, gentlemen, remember 
the converse, too. Remember that justice has 
two sides. Be just to those who built up the 
navy, and for the sake of the future of the coun- 
try, keep in mind those who opposed its building 
up. Read the Congressional Record. Find out 
the Senators and Congressmen who opposed the 
grants for building the new ships, who opposed 
the purchase of armor, without which the ships 



326 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

were worthless; who opposed any adequate 
maintenance for the navy department, and strove 
to cut down the number of men necessary to man 
our fleets. The men who did these things were 
one and all working to bring disaster on the 
country. They have no share in the glory of 
Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no 
cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea cap- 
tains, of the renown of our flag. Their motives 
may or may not have been good, but their acts 
were heavily fraught with evil. Thej did ill for 
the national honor ; and we won in spite of their 
sinister opposition. 

''Now, apply all this to our public men of 
to-day. Our army has never been built up as it 
should be built up. I shall not discuss with an 
audience like this the puerile suggestion that a 
nation of seventy millions of freemen is in dan- 
ger of losing its liberties from the existence of 
an army of one hundred thousand men, three- 
fourths of whom will be employed in certain for- 
eign islands, in certain coast fortresses, and on 
Indian reservations. No man of good sense and 
stout heart can take such a proposition seriously. 
If we are such weaklings as the proposition 
implies, then we are unworthy of freedom in any 



IN CHICAGO. 327 

event. To no body of men in the United States is 
the country so much indebted as to the splendid 
officers and enlisted men of the regular army and 
navy; there is no body from which the country 
has less to fear ; and none of which it should be 
prouder, none which it should be more anxious 
to upbuild. 

''Our army needs complete reorganization— 
not merely enlarging— and the reorganization 
can only come as the result of legislation. A 
proper general staff should be established, and 
the positions of ordnance, commissary and quar- 
termaster officers should be filled by detail from 
the line. Above all, the army must be given the 
chance to exercise in large bodies. Never again 
should we see, as we saw in the Spanish War, 
major-generals in command of divisions, who 
nad never before commanded three companies to- 
gether in the field. Yet incredible to relate, the 
recent Congress has showed a queer inability to 
learn some of the lessons of the war. There were 
large bodies of men in both branches who op- 
posed the declaration of war, who opposed the 
ratification of peace, who opposed the upbuilding 
of the army, and who even opposed the purchase 
of armor at a reasonable price for the battle-ships 



328 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

and cruisers, thereby putting an absolute stop to 
the building of any new fighting ships for the 
navy. If during the years to come any disaster 
should befall our arms, afloat or ashore, and 
thereby any shame come to the United States, 
remember that the blame will lie upon the men 
whose names appear upon the roll-calls of Con- 
gress on the wrong side of these great questions. 
On them will lie the burden of any loss of our sol- 
diers and sailors, of any dishonor to the flag ; and 
upon you and the people of this country will lie 
the blame, if you do not repudiate, in no unmis- 
takable way, what these men have done. The 
blame will not rest upon the untrained com- 
mander of untried troops ; upon the civil officers 
of a department, the organization of which has 
been left utterly inadequate ; or upon the admi- 
ral with insufficient number of ships ; but upon 
the public men who have so lamentably failed in 
forethought as to refuse to remedy these evils 
long in advance, and upon the nation that stands 
behind those public men. 

''So at the present hour no small share of 
the responsibility for the bloodshed in the Phil- 
ippines, the blood of our brothers, and the blood 
of their wild and ignorant foes, lies at the thresh- 



IN CHICAGO. 329 

olds of those who so long delayed the adoption 
of the treaty of peace, and of those who by their 
worse than foolish words deliberately invited a 
savage people to plunge into a war fraught with 
sure disaster for them ; a war, too, in which our 
own brave men who follow the flag must pay 
with their blood for the silly, mock-humanita- 
rianism of the prattlers who sit at home in peace. 
"The army and the navy are the sword and 
the shield which this nation must carry, if she 
is to do her duty among the nations of the earth 
—if she is not to stand merely as the China of 
the Western Hemisphere. Our proper conduct 
toward the tropic islands we have wrested from 
Spain is merely the form which our duty has 
taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound 
to handle the affairs of our own household well. 
We must see that there is civic honesty, civic 
cleanliness, civic good sense in our home admin- 
istration of city. State and nation. We must 
strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward 
the creditors of the nation and of the individual ; 
for the wisest freedom of individual initiative 
where possible, and for the wisest control of indi- 
vidual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare 
of the many. But because we set our own house- 



330 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

hold in order, we are not thereby excused from 
playing our part in the great affairs of the world. 
A man's first duty is to his own home, but he is 
not thereby excused from doing his duty to the 
State; for if he fails in this second duty it is 
under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman. In 
the same way, while a nation's first duty is within 
its own borders, it is not thereby absolved from 
facing its duties in the world as a whole ; and if 
it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its right to 
struggle for a place among the peoples that shape 
the destiny of mankind. 

* ' In the West Indies and the Philipi^ines alike 
we are confronted by most difficult problems. It 
is cowardly to shrink from solving them in the 
proper way ; for solved they must be, if- not by 
us, then by some stronger and more manful race ; 
if we are too weak, too selfish or too foolish to 
solve them, some bolder and abler people must 
undertake the solution. Personally I am far too 
firm a believer in the greatness of my country 
and the power of my countrymen to admit for 
one moment that we shall ever be driven to the 
ignoble alternative. 

* ' The problems are different for the different 
islands. Porto Rico is not large enough to stand 



IN CHICAGO. 331 

alone. We must govern it wisely and well, pri- 
marily in the interest of its own people. Cuba is, 
in my judgment, entitled ultimately to settle for 
itself whether it shall be an independent state 
or an integral portion of the mightiest of repub- 
lics. But until order and stable liberty are 
secured, we must remain in the island to insure 
them; and infinite tact, judgment, moderation 
and courage must be shown by our military and 
civil representatives in keeping the island paci- 
fied, in relentlessly stamping out brigandage, in 
protecting all alike, and yet in showing proper 
recognition to the men who have fought for 
Cuban liberty. The Philippines offer a yet 
graver problem. Their population includes 
half-caste and native Christians, warlike Mos- 
lems, and wild pagans. Many of their people 
are utterly unfit for self-government and show 
no signs of becoming fit. Others may in time 
become fit, but at present can only take part in 
self-government under a wise supervision at 
once firm and beneficent. We have driven Span- 
ish tyranny from the islands. If we now let it 
be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has been 
for harm and not for good. I have scant patience 
with those who fear to undertake the task of gov- 



332 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

erning the Philippines, and who openly avow 
that they do fear to undertake it, or that they 
shrink from it because of the expense and trou- 
ble ; but I have even scanter patience with those 
who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide 
and cover their timidity, and who cant about 
'liberty' and the 'consent of the governed,' in 
order to excuse themselves for their unwilling- 
ness to play the part of men. Their doctrines if 
carried out would make it incumbent upon us to 
leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their 
own salvation and to decline to interfere in a 
single Indian reservation. Their doctrines con- 
demn your forefathers and mine for ever having 
settled in these United States. 

' ' England 's rule in India and Egypt has been 
of great benefit to England, for it has trained up 
generations of men accustomed to look at the 
larger and loftier side of public life. It has been 
of even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And 
finally and most of all, it has advanced the cause 
of civilization. So, if we do our duty aright in 
the Philippines, we will add to that national 
renown which is the highest and finest part of 
national life; will greatly benefit the people of 
the Philippine Islands ; and above all we will play 



IN CHICAGO. 333 

our part well in the great work of uplifting man- 
kind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that 
we must show in a very high degree the qualities 
of courage, of honesty, and of good judgment. 
Resistance must be stamped out. The first and 
all-important work to be done is to establish the 
supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed 
resistance before we can accomplish anything 
else, and there should be no parleying, no falter- 
ing in dealing with our foe. As for those in our 
own country who encourage the foe, we can 
afford contemptuously to disregard them; but 
it must be remembered that their utterances are 
saved from being treasonable merely from the 
fact that they are despicable. 

' ' When once we have put down armed resist- 
ance, when once our rule is acknowledged, then 
an even more difficult task will begin, for then 
we must see to it that the islands are adminis- 
tered with absolute honesty and with good judg- 
ment. If we let the public service of the islands 
be turned into the prey of the spoils politician, 
we shall have begun to tread the path which 
Spain trod to her own destruction. We must 
send out there only good and able men, chosen 
for their fitness and not because of their partisan 



334 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

service, and these men must not only administer 
impartial justice to the natives and serve their 
own government with honesty and fidelity, but 
must show the utmost tact and firmness, remem- 
bering that with such people as those with whom 
we are to deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, 
and that next to weakness comes lack of consid- 
eration for their principles and prejudices. 

''I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that 
our country calls not for the life of ease, but for 
the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth 
century looms before us big with the fate of many 
nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely 
swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we 
shrink from the hard contests where men must 
win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all 
they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peo- 
ples will pass us by and will win for themselves 
the domination of the world. Let us therefore 
boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our 
duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold 
righteousness by deed and by word ; resolute to 
be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, 
yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us 
shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within 
or without the nation, provided we are certain 



IN CHICAGO. 335 

that the strife is justified ; for it is only through 
strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, 
that we shall ultimately win the goal of true 
national greatness." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

HONORS THEUST UPON HIM. 

NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT AGAINST HIS EMPHATIC PRO- 
TEST—SINKS PERSONAL PREFERENCE AT THE CALL OF PUBLIC 
DUTY— STRIKING FIGURE IN THE CAMPAIGN — PRESIDING OVER 
THE SENATE— SEEKS RECREATION IN A POST-ELECTION HUNT 
FOR MOUNTAIN LIONS. 

Man does not always dispose of his life as he 
wills. Governor Roosevelt, at the executive man- 
sion at Albany, was in precisely the position he 
desired. From the beginning of his political 
career he had protested against the abuses that 
existed in administration of affairs. He had 
exerted all his powers, in each position occupied, 
to impress the people of his State with the wis- 
dom of obeying the laws. It was not the low 
offenders against petty restrictive measures that 
offered menace to the commonweal ; but those in 
enviable station— men to whom much had been 
given, and of whom the people had a right to 
expect much in the way of justice and of right. 
As legislator, as police commissioner, as expo- 

S36 



HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 337 

nent of the merit system under national appoint- 
ment, and in successive campaigns, his effort had 
always been for a reform in the public service of 
his State. Wherever his activities were em- 
ployed he had been handicapped by the opposi- 
tion of forces from which he had a right to expect 
assistance. He had been hampered by the inertia 
of a system which all men conceded was bad, but 
which few men in politics dared to see corrected. 
As Governor of New York State he was in a 
position to put his reforms into practice. He 
had the power which he had lacked before. He 
was the dictator of the situation. Four years as 
chief executive of the Empire State would, it 
may confidently be assumed, have resulted in 
such a purification of public morals, such a 
reformation in official conduct, as the great Re- 
public has never known. No one knew better 
than he the men and the forces against which he 
would have to contend, and it is not likely there 
was another man in the State so well equipped 
for that struggle as he was. It was— at least for 
that time— the goal toward which all his training 
and his effort had been tending. It was the work 
which he had all his life been trying to do, and 
it would probably have proven of greater benefit 



338 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

to the nation, as illustrating sensible and substan- 
tial reform, than any other man could have con- 
tributed. It had been particularly gratifying to 
him, at the close of the war with Spain, to know 
that the people of his native State turned to him 
with the demand that he take charge of their 
public affairs as Governor; and it was with 
regret that he heard the premonitory summons 
to a higher but less useful office. As the time for 
the national Republican convention of 1900 
approached, speculation regarding the ticket to 
be chosen was simplified. For first place but one 
name was commonly considered. President 
McKinley was to be given a second term. As to 
the choice for Vice-President, the politicians 
canvassed the chances of this man and of that 
man— but the people spoke with an increasing 
assertiveness for Theodore Roosevelt. 

Something of the man's good fortune was 
again revealed in the situation. The ' ' geograph- 
ical consideration ' ' was satisfied in his selection. 
Mr. McKinley was from the West— for Ohio is 
' ' west" to the dwellers in Atlantic States. What 
would have been the result if both had been from 
the same section cannot be conjectured. But he 
was at the same time at odds with fortune regard- 



HONOKS THRUST UPON HIM. 339 

ing anotlier consideration always of moment in 
tlie malving of a ticket. He was by no means 
a ricli man. It must not be supposed that he 
was a man of fallen fortunes, or that the estate 
which had come to him through generations of 
thrifty ancestors had been dissipated. That was 
not the case. Yet it will be remembered that the 
Roosevelts had never been among the magnates 
of the community. They had accumulated, but 
they had also enjoyed their wealth, and had 
always done good with it. There were scores of 
families in New York twenty times as rich as 
Theodore Roosevelt; and ordinarily at least one 
man of wealth has been regarded as necessary 
on the national ticket. 

Here, then, were objections of his own, and 
other objections which his party friends were 
urging, all against his selection as a candidate for 
the Vice-Presidency. Of course the fact of 
geography or of inadequate wealth were of small 
moment to him. If he had desired the place, he 
would have announced that desire, and have 
striven for it. But his life work was before him, 
ready to his hand. The opportunity for the great 
good which he desired to do had arrived. The 
means were in his possession. It seemed like 



340 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

abandonment of duty, like turning back from 
trial and labor, like retreating in the face of an 
enemy to sanction in any way the suggestion that 
he was willing to leave that office for a greater. 
Nothing could be greater or more noble than the 
task he had set himself to perform. 

So that there was no man in the nation so 
interested as he in silencing the demand for 
Theodore Koosevelt's candidacy for Vice-Presi- 
dent. But there he encountered the very political 
opposition which he had set himself to oppose. 
The forces of his own jiarty in New York which 
were not in accord with him knew that he should 
be removed from the gubernatorial chair at any 
cost. They had not wanted him there at the 
beginning, and had done all in their power to 
oppose him. They would do all in their power 
now to promote him. So, as the national conven- 
tion approached, they encouraged that demand 
for Roosevelt. They extended the scope of their 
influence all over the country. In some places 
they went so far as to increase the clamor for his 
name at the head of the ticket— and many poli- 
ticians are still willing to assert that he could 
have had the nomination for the Presidential 
office if he had manifested the slightest desire for 



HONOES THRUST UPON HIM. oil 

it. But the result of the machinations of the poli- 
ticians coincided exactly with the desires of the 
people for honoring this man, and as June 19 
approached, the day of the convention's assem- 
bling, it became more and more evident that he 
would at least have the offer of the second place 
in the gift of the nation . 

There was no coy disclaimer, no shallow pre- 
tense of not wanting the honor. There was a 
rugged and honest declaration that he wanted to 
remain Governor of New York until his work 
there was completed. He constantly and dili- 
gently tried to discourage the "Roosevelt boom" 
that he found at Philadelphia. He was again 
one of the New York delegates to the convention, 
as he had been to the Chicago convention of 1884. 
And all the power and influence he possessed was 
exerted in opposition to his own selection. But 
it was fruitless. The nation had called him, and 
he could not but comply. So that the ticket was 
made up even before the convention was called 
to order. 

As the work of the convention proceeded, Mr. 
McKinley was named for President, and Mr. 
Roosevelt rose to second that nomination. His 
speech was in part as follows : ' ' I rise to second 



o4z THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

the nomination of William McKinley, because 
with him as leader this i^eople has trod the path 
of national greatness and prosperity with the 
strides of a giant, and because under him we can 
and will succeed in the election. Exactly as in 
the past we have remedied the evils which we 
undertook to remedy, so nov/ when we saj' that a 
wrong shall be righted, it most assuredly will be 
righted. 

' ' We stand on the threshold of a new century, 
a century big with the fate of the great nations 
of the earth. It rests with us to decide now 
whether in the opening years of that century we 
shall march forward to fresh triumphs, or 
whether at the outset we shall deliberately crip- 
ple ourselves for the contest. Is America a 
weakling, to shrink from the work that must be 
done by the world-powers? No! The young 
giant of the West stands on a continent, and 
clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our 
nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into 
the future with eager and fearless eyes, and 
rejoices, as a strong man, to run the race. We 
do not stand in the craven mood, asking to be 
spared the task, cringing as we gaze on the con- 
test. No. We challenge the proud privilege of 



HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 343 

doing the work that Providence has allotted us, 
and we face the coming years high of heart and 
resolute of faith that to our people is given to 
win such honor and renown as has never yet been 
granted to the peoples of the earth. ' ' 

He was, beyond question, the one great char- 
acter in the convention. The sessions were held 
in Philadelphia, a city hallowed by memories of 
trials in Revolutionary times, by the memories of 
the Declaration of Independence which had been 
signed there ; hallowed by the memories of that 
earlier Republican national convention, in 1856, 
when Col. John 0. Fremont was the first candi- 
date of the party for the office. And all the tra- 
ditions of that earlier age, when freedom and 
advancement called the best men in the nation to 
the public service seemed throbbing in the air of 
the big convention hall. There was no opposi- 
tion to Mr. McKinley's selection. Yet until the 
Governor of New York took his place there on 
the platform and began his speech seconding the 
nomination, there were men who feared he would 
himself carry off first honors. Of course he was 
wholly incapable of such an act. It would have 
been a base treachery ; but the men who feared 
him knew the limitless reaches of his power. 



344 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

knew wliat an idol lie liad become in the public 
eye, knew that if he had been inspired by their 
own code of morals he would take advantage of 
even that great and sacred opportunity. But he 
was loyal to the chief of his party. And when he 
had concluded his speech of seconding, his critics 
knew they had heard a man who was giving up 
an office which he wanted for the certainty of one 
not at all to his liking, and that no consideration 
on earth could induce him to be either a traitor or 
a coward. It is doubtful if any man in political 
life in this country has ever stood in a position 
similar to that occupied by Governor Roosevelt 
at the Philadelphia convention. It is certain 
none has acquitted himself more honorably. 

Y/hen the cheers over the naming of the Pres- 
ident had died away, there was a demand for 
Roosevelt for second place. No effort was 
needed to make his nomination sure. Not even 
his own opposition could prevent it. And when 
the roll of the convention was called, every mem- 
ber but one voted for Theodore Roosevelt for 
nomination to the office of Vice-President. That 
one member did not vote. It was Mr. Roosevelt 
himself. 

His letter, published a month later, accepted 




COLONEL ROOSEVELT DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF 1900 



HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 345 

the honor thrust upon him, and sounded the key- 
note of his party, the sentiment of his country, in 
language too vigorous and clear to be misunder- 
stood. Partisan though he was, he still held to 
the position of a patriot; and there was no 
speaker or writer in the campaign less offensive 
to his political enemies than was this man who 
had proved his right to talk plainly to his fellow- 
countrymen. 

In compliment to his service in the war, 
numerous bands of peaceful ''Rough Riders" 
were organized all over the nation. They 
included men from every walk of life. Farmers 
and bankers, lawyers and laboring men rode side 
by side in parades, all clad in the khald suits 
resembling those worn by the soldiers at San 
Juan. It was a campaign device more useful 
than the ' ' log cabins ' ' of 1S40, or the ' ' tanners ' 
clubs" of 1868. Having accepted the nomina- 
tion, Governor Roosevelt threw himself into the 
campaign with all the ardor of his nature, and 
contributed more largely, perhaps, to the election 
of the ticket than any other man in the nation. 
As a public speaker he was a most pronounced 
success. It can hardly be said he possesses the 
graces of a polished orator. There were scores of 



346 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

men in his party and in the opi30sition who could 
compose an address of far greater literary finish. 
There were many men who understood the arts 
of the elocutionist, and could round a period with 
a nicer sense of dramatic requirements. But 
there was none, on either side, who spoke so 
directly to the hearts of the people, or from whose 
speaking the people carried away so much to 
remember. The campaign which he made has 
never been equaled in the number of States cov- 
ered, the interest excited or in the number of 
persons addressed. A famous weekly newspaper 
has said: "The campaigns of Douglas in 1856, 
of Greeley in 1872, and of Blaine in 1884 were 
historic in those respects; but not one of the 
candidates in those years made a tenth as many 
speeches as Roosevelt did in 1900. He traveled 
22,000 miles, delivered 673 addresses, most of 
them of more than an hour's duration, visiting 
567 towns, and speaking to 3,500,000 people. 
Most of his itinerary was in the ]\Iiddle West 
and the trans-^Iississippi region, throughout all 
of which Governor Roosevelt has always been a 
favorite. One of these gatherings was especially 
notable for its size, its exuberance, the number of 
elements it represented, and the impartiality with 



HONOES THRUST UPON HIM. 347 

which it voiced the feelings of all sections. It 
was in St. Louis, that central point of the merid- 
ians and the parallels, the mingling-place of the 
North and the South, the West and the East. The 
meeting was in the Coliseum, the largest audito- 
rium entered by Governor Roosevelt on his tour. 
In the vast hall were crowded fifteen thousand 
people. As many more were close to the build- 
ing on the outside, eager to catch a glimpse of 
him as he passed in and out. As he entered the 
hall, the cheers shook the structure, and the thou- 
sands of flags and handkerchiefs waved like a 
forest in a tornado. The audience sang 'Amer- 
ica,' in which the orator joined. The bands suc- 
cessively and miscellaneously played 'John 
Brown 's Body, ' ' The Bonnie Blue Flag, " March- 
ing Through Georgia,' 'Maryland, My Mary- 
land,' 'The Red, White and Blue,' 'Dixie,' and 
' The Star-Spangled Banner. ' It was a striking 
exhibit of the number and variety of ingredients 
which form the composite called the American. 
The demonstration was a magnificent tribute to 
the popularity of Governor Roosevelt, particu- 
larly in the West. ' ' 

As Rowland, the Rough Rider, had said : ' ' We 
didn't do no hard fighting down there"— refer- 



348 THEODOKE KOOSEVELT. 

ring to the Santiago campaign. Governor Roose- 
velt would have been the last man to pretend the 
conflicts at San Juan hill and at Las Guasimas 
were great battles. The percentage of fatal- 
ity was larger than at Waterloo, it is true ; but 
in the sense that Hohenlinden, Gravelotte or 
Gettysburg were battles, he would have been first 
to enter a disclaimer. Yet so far as heroism is 
concerned, a battle is an individual affair, and 
those men who went up that hill at San Juan, or 
through the jungle at Las Guasimas, were equal 
in courage and in execution to the men who 
charged under Cardigan at Balaklava or with 
Pickett at Cemetery Ridge. There is a broad 
and generous sense of fairness in the minds of 
the American people ; and they rated as a hero 
this man who had led the fighting force. They 
felt, and they always will feel, that whatever suc- 
cess was accomplished in those hot days on the 
land side of Santiago was the work of Roosevelt. 
They were riot sure how much good had been 
secured by the victory, nor what disposition 
would be made of the positions gained. But they 
did know that American prestige had been ad- 
vanced, and that the great Republic had been 
lifted in the eyes of the world, and in their own 



HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 349 

eyes. So they rallied to the standard of this man 
who was strenuous in peace and efficient in war, 
and pledged their allegiance to him. 

The day of voting came, and McKinley and 
Boosevelt were elected. The man who contrib- 
uted largely to that success, as to most in which 
he had at all been a factor, resigned the work in 
New York State which he would have preferred 
to follow, and devoted himself to the less trying 
—and less useful— duties of the Vice-Presidency. 
It has been said he was not offensive even to his 
political opponents in the campaign. There was 
a day in Colorado when a hoodlum crowd jeered 
at him, and when a number of irresponsibles 
whom shame has hidden treated this candidate 
for the second office in the nation much as they 
might have treated a bad actor. But there never 
was a day when they planted in his mind an 
antipathy against them as members of the great 
body of American citizens. He knew the stress 
of partisan hatred in the heat of a campaign. He 
knew the AVest in particular; and the incident 
which affronted the nation waked no lasting 
resentment in the mind of Roosevelt. When he 
had been elevated to his high office, he was Vice- 
President of the United States— not the favored 



350 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

choice of a party. He was an expression, so far 
as liis office went, of the will and the desire, the 
purjDose and the destiny, of the whole nation. 
Not one lingering trace of resentment lurked in 
his bosom. He was the elected of the whole peo- 
ple. He refused to harbor enmity. 

When Congress assembled, he became the pre- 
siding officer of the Senate. No one knew better 
than he the small modicum of initiative accorded 
that officer. Yet there is something almost pro- 
phetic on this point in one of his articles, written 
in 1896. It was long before he could have had 
any thought of being elected to the office, and the 
point of view is, therefore, entirely outside the 
personal equation. Speaking of the nomination 
of some Vice-Presidential candidates previous to 
1896, he said: "It will be noticed that most of 
these evils arise from the fact that the Vice-Pres- 
ident, under ordinary circumstances, j^ossesses 
so little real power. He presides over the Senate, 
and he has in Washington a position of marked 
social importance; but his political weight as 
Vice-President is almost nil. There is always a 
chance that he may become President. As this 
is only a chance it seems quite impossible to per- 
suade politicians to give it the proper weight. 



HONOBB THRUST UPON HIM. 351 

This certainly does not seem right. The Vice- 
President should, so far as possible, represent 
the same views and principles that have secured 
the nomination and election of the President; 
and he should be a man trusted and able in the 
event of any accident to his chief, to take up the 
work of the latter just where it was left. ' ' 

It is a little curious that a man who could have 
said that in 1896 should have been the first Vice- 
President thereafter to realize that ''chance of 
succeeding to the Presidency. ' ' 

Through the months of his incumbency of the 
office, in the winter session, little can be said for 
Vice-President Roosevelt other than that he was 
fair in his judgments, courteous in his relations 
with the Senators, and always cognizant of the 
dignity of his position as next to the official head 
of the nation. Little can be said, except this: 
There was never a day when any band of politi- 
cians felt for a moment that he was under obliga- 
tion ; that he was owned. As he had been a stal- 
wart and honest man from the beginning, so he 
continued in his high office. And the forces of 
the Senate knew that its presiding officer could 
neither be fooled nor flattered. He was still a 
member of his party, but he was at the same time 



352 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

a Vice-President of the United States; and no 
influence could make liim less than that ! 

When Congress adjourned, when the work of 
that notable session had ended, Vice-President 
Roosevelt took advantage of the vacation to 
engage in a hunt which he had been contemplat- 
ing for years, and which possessed all possible 
attractiveness for a man of his mettle. Of the 
few big animals in the United States, still wild 
and defiant of the hunter, the grizzly bear and the 
mountain lion, the latter commonly called the 
cougar, are the most distinctive. He had made 
trial with the grizzly, and the result of his hunt- 
ing has been told. There was a section of the 
country, in the wilds of Colorado, where the 
cougar had not been much hunted ; and there he 
went in the late winter and early spring of 1901. 
He found a hunter who possessed the necessary 
pack of hunting-dogs, and who knew where the 
dangerous animals could be found. And there 
the two of them hunted for a month. In that 
time Mr. Eoosevelt killed fourteen cougars, 
some at the expense of great peril, all at the 
expense of hardship and exposure. The story of 
that hunt has been admirably told by Mr. Roose- 
velt in Scribner's Magazine for October, 1901. 




A FINE BOBCAT 



HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 353 

But, lest the imputation of an unwarranted lust 
for hunting should lie against him, it must be 
stated that natural history is greatly the gainer 
because of his hunt. He tells of the varying 
characteristics of the animals; of their range 
and habits and peculiarities ; and he sent to the 
Smithsonian Institute at Washington the skulls 
of all the animals killed, so that their measure- 
ments might be taken and added to the slender 
sum of information possessed by Americans as to 
this most distinctive of American animals. The 
interesting feature as to all his enterprises is that 
he looks below the surface. Here, at a time when 
he might have been pardoned for resigning him- 
self utterly to the delights of the chase, he was 
studying the characteristics of the creatures he 
encountered, comparing them with the rather 
limited data already published, and establishing 
the truth as existing facts provided the means. 
He returned from that hunt to enjoy a short 
summer of rest, perhaps the first he had really 
known since that distant day in the Murray Hill 
congressional district of New York, when he con- 
cluded to go to the assembly; and from it he 
was called— abundantly prepared, yet tearfully 
reluctant— to the chief magistracy of the nation. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ASSASSINATION OF PKESIDENT MC KINLEY. 

LEON CZOLGOSZ STRIKES DOWN THE HEAD OF THE NATION — 
COUNTRY PLUNGED IN SORROW — HOPE AND DESPAIR ALTER- 
NATE — * * NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE ' ' — END OP A NOBLE 
LIFE— THE REPUBUC PAUSES WHILE ITS PRESIDENT IS LAID TO 
BEST. 

The Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo was 
in successful progress September 5, 1901, when 
President McKinley left his home in the White 
House in Washington in the company of his 
wife and the members of his cabinet, together 
with a party of other friends, for a visit to that 
"magic city" by the Falls of Niagara. Septem- 
ber 6 was "President's Day," and an immense 
number of people had gathered to greet the chief 
executive of the nation. In the afternoon of that 
day President McKinley took his stand in the 
Temple of Music, with his personal and official 
friends about him. The crowds of people formed 
themselves in line, and passed for the handshake 
which has long been a part of executive custom, 
and to pay their respects to one whom all hon- 

354 



Mc kinley's assassination. 355 

ored, whatever their political prejudice may have 
been. 

All about him were the accessories of harmo- 
nious sounds. A little to one side stood the 
mighty organ which had but an hour before 
breathed forth the tender passages from ' ' The 
Messiah"; and the whole atmosphere seemed 
attuned to the sentiment of that angel band 
which sang to the shepherds : ' ' Peace on earth, 
good will to men. ' ' 

Hundreds had walked slowly past, shaking 
the hand of the President, and moving into the 
wider grounds, to await his reappearance for the 
drive from the plaza. Farmers, business men, 
manufacturers, sailors and soldiers, young and 
old, women and children, all were represented in 
the lines that pressed up for the greeting and the 
coveted handshake. In that line, unmarked by 
anything that could publish his purpose to 
those charged with the President's safe-keeping, 
came Leon Czolgosz, a young man of twenty- 
four, in the conventional dress of the well-to-do 
mechanic or artisan. His right hand was half 
concealed beneath the breast of his coat, and 
about the wrist was wound, in such manner as 
to be observable by all, a handkerchief. It was as 



356 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

though the hand were disabled, and had been 
bound up. In consequence of that, he extended 
his left hand for the greeting; and President 
McKinley, always observant of misfortune, 
always tender in his consideration for those who 
suffer, took the left hand gently in his right, the 
quick sympathy beaming from his face as he bent 
above the citizen. 

In that instant, with his naked palm pressing 
the hand of his President, Leon Czolgosz drew 
from beneath his coat a revolver, and fired two 
shots into the body before him. 

Czolgosz 's hat, carried under his arm, and 
pressed against his side with his elbow, fell to 
the ground. There was an instant of unspeak- 
able silence, in which the most trivial of details 
impressed themselves on the memory of those 
who stood about. The report of the shots had 
not been heard outside of the building. Those 
nearest the President recovered in a fraction of 
a moment, and one of them leaped on the culprit 
—who, however, made not the slightest attempt 
to escape. He was thrown to the ground. He 
was grasped and buffeted by a score who were 
tardily recognizing the enormity of his frightful 
crime. The President staggered back, and was 



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PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT CONFERRING WITH SENATOR HANNA ON THE WAY TO 
THE MILBURN HOUSE, BUFFALO, N. Y. 



Mckinley's assassination. 357 

caught in the arms of those nearest him. Of all 
in the building, he was first to understand. And 
the words which welled to his whitening lips, 
even before the waking of conscious pain, were : 
' * May God forgive him ! ' ' 

He was assisted to an armchair, and physi- 
cians were summoned. His attention was first 
attracted to the assassin, who was being hustled 
vehemently from the building. ''Don't let them 
hurt him," he said. Then, in a moment: "Do 
not tell my wife of this. Or, if it must be done, 
do not frighten her. ' ' 

He was removed to the emergency hospital, 
where it was found the first ball had inflicted but 
a slight flesh wound, but that the second had pen- 
etrated the stomach. After a surgical operation, 
rendered instantly necessary, the President was 
removed to the residence of a friend, where he 
had been a guest since arriving in Buffalo. 

And there, after seven days, he died. 

His assassin had never before seen President 
McKinley. He had no personal ends to gain by 
the act, and no sense of revenge to gratify. He 
stated later in jail that he was an anarchist ; that 
he believed all kings and rulers should be ''re- 
moved, ' ' and that he had come to Buffalo for the 



358 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

express purpose of killing President McKinley. 
He had voted for that gentleman in 1896, but 
since then had listened to the speeches of Emma 
Goldman, a leader among the anarchists of the 
country, and had read the publications of their 
societies. He at no time denied his act, and at 
most times appeared composed and sane. When 
arraigned, he pleaded ' ' guilty, ' ' although the law 
of New York State refuses to accept the plea in 
capital cases. Beyond that, little is known of 
Czolgosz, except that he was a native of the 
United States, and that his father was an immi- 
grant from Russian Poland. The family had 
lived at different places in the lower i^eninsula 
of Michigan, and no member of it had ever risen 
to public notice, with the exception of the father, 
who in 1876 made one of a party that attacked 
a tyrannical landlord of the neighborhood, and 
killed him. This landlord was a nobleman from 
central Germany, and had brought to America 
quite a fortune in money. He established himself 
on an island near the east shore of Lake Michi- 
gan, and set up a sort of old-world barony. He 
regarded himself as vastly the superior of his 
neighbors, and imposed upon them grossly. He 
indulged in a life of lawlessness and brazen 



MC kinley's assassination. 359 

debauchery at his island home, and scandalized 
the whole community. His habits became unbear- 
able, and his abuse of the settlers about the place 
continued until, driven to desperation, they 
gathered one night, and fired a fusilade of bul- 
lets into his house. He was instantly killed, and 
the perpetrators of the deed escaped without a 
trial. It was the sense of the region that the dis- 
solute and abusive nobleman had received i^re- 
cisely what he deserved, and the matter dropped 
there: The father of Leon Czolgosz was a mem- 
ber of that party, and a number of the family 
relatives still live in Alpena county, where these 
incidents occurred. Later the father of Leon 
moved to Detroit, and there the lad attended pub- 
lic school. He is said to have been a timid child, 
a cowardly boy through all his years up to man- 
hood. He has himself complained that he * ' never 
had any luck." In many respects he became a 
complete realization of degeneracy. He read 
books relating to anarchy, and advocating that 
doctrine. He listened to addresses by a number 
of the more prominent exponents of anarchy, and 
readily agreed with them in their denunciation 
of law. It is possible that the story of slaying 
the German baron was told and approved in his 



360 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

father 's family, and that Leon came naturally to 
think that substantial justice could best be done 
without regard to the forms of law, and on the 
judgment of individuals who may feel themselves 
aggrieved. True, he was not aggrieved as an 
individual in this case ; but a man who advances 
'411 luck" as an excuse for failure in life is likely 
to regard all successful men as his enemies. It 
is then easy to apply the other rule : that a man 
should settle with his enemies in such manner 
as will best gratify his sense of their crime's 
enormity. 

There may have been a plot among anarchists 
of the country, and that Czolgosz was deputed 
by fellow-malcontents to ''remove" the Presi- 
dent. For a man habitually "out of luck," he 
certainly rode around the country a good deal. 
He was in Chicago ten days before the assassina- 
tion, and there learned that the President was 
going to Buffalo October 5. He paid his fare 
from the Western to the Eastern city. He had 
kept up his dues in the anarchist "lodges" to 
which he belonged. He had been a worker in 
iron, but had left that occupation because of ill 
health. For two years he seems not to have had 
any very lucrative occupation, yet he had money. 



MC KINLEY S ASSASSINATION. 361 

All tliese incidents support the tlieoiy that Czol- 
gosz was an emissary of the organized haters of 
law, in spite of his own statement that he com- 
mitted the crime on his own account, and with not 
even a suggestion from any one else. Just what 
is the truth, the future will most likely tell. Cer- 
tainly there was not even the harebrained reason 
existing in the case of Guiteau, nor the passionate 
motive of Booth. 

It happened that a number of very excellent 
physicians were close at hand when the President 
was shot, and they gave him immediate attention. 
Specialists were summoned, and every step in 
the treatment was taken on the judgment and 
approval of the men best qualified to decide. All 
that first night the suspense throughout the coun- 
try was painfully intense. The President had 
not been instantly killed, and a gleam of hope 
came from the sick chamber when it was known 
he still lived at dawn. The hope grew next day 
when signs of improvement were detected, and 
published throughout the world. Messages of 
condolence from every capital in every land were 
followed with other messages of cheer at the 
apparent start toward recovery. Through six 
days each bulletin was fairer than the last, and 



362 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

it was with a double sorrow that the nation was 
advised on the following Friday— a week from 
the day of the shooting— that the President was 
very much worse, and could hardly hope to re- 
cover. And a little past midnight on the morning 
of Saturday he died. 

President McKinley knew that his end was 
approaching, and he fronted the grim fate with 
all the courage which a man of such life should 
have possessed. He bade farewell to his friends, 
and the members of his official family, and his 
parting with his wife was sorrowfully tender. 
He spoke encouraging words to all, and partic- 
ularly to the woman who had- been his ' ' half of 
life" for more than thirty years. 

When the end came an examination was made 
by the physicians. The bullet which had pene- 
trated his stomach had never been removed. The 
surgeons thought the patient would be exposed to 
less risk by this course than if they should sub- 
ject him to the exhausting ordeal of further prob- 
ing. But in the autopsy it was found that the 
course of the bullet was marked with gangrene. 
Whether this was the result of some substance 
applied to the bullet before firing, or whether the 
gangrene was due to another cause, could not 



MC kinley's assassination. 363 

be determined. But the apparent improvement 
in President McKinley's condition had been de- 
ceptive. In the absence of the gangrene, he 
would almost certainly have recovered. With it 
there, death had begun from the instant the 
wound was inflicted. 

Through Sunday the body of the dead Presi- 
dent lay in the house of his friend, and sermons 
were delivered throughout the country extolling 
his virtues, and deprecating the horror of his 
taking off. The whole nation was bowed with 
the terrible sorrow. Mr. McKinley had always 
been a strong partisan, and yet he had been so 
gentle in manner, so courteous even to his oppo- 
nents, and so manly and honorable in his busi- 
ness and social life, that there was no bitterness 
in any heart toward him. Those who had differed 
with him in policy cheerfully conceded his up- 
rightness and sincerity. But, above all, there was 
a sentiment, more evident here than in any other 
case, that this man was the President of the whole 
nation; that he was, in some sense, the expres- 
sion of the purpose and the dignity of every law- 
abiding man and woman. It was the perfection 
of the national sentiment ; and every citizen felt 
a personal sense of bereavement, of indignation 



364 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

at the felon who had stricken down this official, 
and of horror at the deed. Ahnost the last words 
of the President had been : ' ' God 's will be done ! * ' 
And the general sorrow was tempered with a 
reverent regard for the uncomplaining victim of 
unreasoning crime. 

Monday morning the body, inclosed in a cas- 
ket upon which the flag of the nation was laid, 
started for Washington. The journey was made 
on a special train, which was given the right of 
way. All along the line were evidences of the 
general grief. In cities and towns bells were 
tolled, and flags were at half-mast. Along coun- 
try roads families of farmers, and pupils from 
district schools assembled, and waved their tear- 
ful salute as the crape-covered train hurried past. 
In Harrisburg a great choral society sang 
"Nearer, my God, to Thee"— a hymn which had 
been well loved by the President. Thousands 
gathered at the station in Washington, and fol- 
lowed respectfully and silently through the night 
as the casket was carried to the White House. It 
remained there until morning, and then was 
removed to the rotunda of the capitol, where a 
funeral service was conducted in presence of a 
thousand friends of the late President, and offi- 



365 

cials of the various governments represented in 
Washington. At the conclusion of the service 
the great bronze doors were thrown open, and the 
public was admitted. For six hours the people 
filed past, and then the doors were closed again, 
and the great coffin was carried back to the execu- 
tive mansion. 

Thursday the body of President McKinley 
was consigned to a vault in the cemetery at Can- 
ton, Ohio, the home he had chosen when a young 
man. The little city was crowded beyond all prec- 
edent. More than a hundred thousand people had 
come to attend the last sad rites. The entire pop- 
ulation of Canton was but thirty thousand, and 
accommodations for entertainment were far 
from adequate. But there was no complaint at 
discomfort. An inclination on the part of cer- 
tain citizens to make money in consequence of the 
nation's grief— as by renting their windows, and 
charging exorbitant prices for food— was noted, 
and passed without comment. 

The final funeral services were held in the 
Canton church at which Mr. McKinley had been 
an attendant, of which he had been a member 
through all his adult life ; and then the last jour- 
ney began. Nominally, it was a private funeral. 



366 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

Actually it was a national demonstration. More 
than twelve thousand marching men were in line. 
About half were the citizen soldiery of Ohio. The 
rest were old soldiers, or members of the civic 
and fraternal organizations from all over the 
country. The head of the cortege arrived at the 
cemetery at 3 :30 o 'clock in the afternoon. The 
roadway from the gate to the receiving vault was 
strewn with flowers. From the hill-tops the Pres- 
ident's salute of twenty-one guns, fired at inter- 
vals of a minute, boomed his last official recogni- 
tion. As the casket was lifted from the hearse 
the gathered throngs stood with bared heads; 
and when the door of the vault was reached, eight 
buglers, brought from the regular anny, joined 
in sounding "taps"— the soldier's good-night. 
Mrs. McKinley, who had been in delicate health 
for years, was unable to accompany the body of 
her husband to its last resting-place, and re- 
mained in the Canton home which his industry 
had provided, and his love had glorified to her 
using. 

The funeral was made the more impressive 
by an unprecedented action taken throughout the 
country. While the coffin was being transferred 
from hearse to vault, and while the last prayers 




PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT'S CASKEl 



Mc kinley's assassination. 367 

were being said, industry of all kinds, in every 
city of the Eepublic, was absolutely suspended. 
Of all the tributes paid to the dead President, 
none approached in majesty and impressiveness 
that utter abandonment of all occupation. From 
the Atlantic to the Pacific not a wheel turned in 
any mill, nor on any railroad, for the five min- 
utes of that final ceremony. Engineers, firemen, 
conductors, crews, paused for a period in their 
occupation, turned devoutly toward the little 
town where the last sad rites were being per- 
formed, and sent their thoughts to join in the 
hushed farewell. That stopping of America, that 
pause of the United States, that wait of every 
citizen while the body of one dead was laid away, 
is impressive past all power of description. Of 
it a famous author has said: ''Five minutes 
taken out of life ! Five minutes snatched from 
activity, lost to productive effort, subtracted 
from material struggle ! It is an amazing thing 
in the most energetic, the most thrifty nation on 
the face of the earth. And yet that five minutes, 
taken from the total money value of the day, 
brought in return a sense of tenderness, of fra- 
ternity with all the other millions waiting, bowed 
and reverent, which nothing else could have pro- 



368 THEODORE BOOSEVELT. 

duced. That five minutes was the best invest- 
ment that busy lives could possibly make. It 
brought them nearer all that was noble in the life 
that had been ended. It gave them a better con- 
fidence in the citizenship of America. It enacted 
anew the law of love, and blessed with its swift 
ministrations the purer patriotism. Silence and | 

tears for the victim of malignant hate; new | 

resolves for the upholding of law and the exten- | 

sion of real liberty ; unbounded faith in the sta- I 

bility of our republican institutions ; an impres- | 

sive warning to the foes of order— such was the 
moment's meaning to every loyal American, and 
to the world. 

' ' Eighty millions of people, gathered about a 
bit of earth, six feet by two ! That is the specta- 
cle bought at a price so matchless. ' ' 



CHAPER XIX. 

SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT TAKES OATH OF OFFICE — INFORMED OF HIS 
chief's death "WHILE HUNTING IN THE ADIRONDACKS — SOL- 
EMN SCENES AT THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SUBLIME OBLI- 
GATION—DECLARES HE WILL CARRY OUT MC KINLEY'S POLICY. 

Theodore Roosevelt became President of the 
United States on Saturday, September 14, 1901. 
The oath of office was administered by Judge 
John R. Hazel, of the United States District 
Court, at 3:32 p.m., in Buffalo, New York, in 
the residence of Mr. Ansley Wilcox, a personal 
friend of the Vice-President, who had been his 
host earlier in the week when the physicians 
thought President McKinley would recover 
from the wounds inflicted by the assassin. 

When the President was shot Colonel Roose- 
velt was at Isle La Motte, near Burlington, Ver- 
mont. He had just finished an address when he 
was informed of the dreadful tragedy. He has- 
tened at once to the side of his wounded chief, 
where he remained until the physicians, deceived 



370 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

as to the deadly nature of the wounds, gave him 
assurance that the President would live. Then, 
worn by the terrible strain of the situation, he 
retired to the solitude of the mountains, praying 
that the prediction might be fulfilled. 

To no one of all the hosts of President McKin- 
ley's warmest admirers was the shock of the 
nation's tragedy so severe as to him who was 
nearest in honor and counsel. During all his 
later years of public life Mr. Eoosevelt had been 
in the confidence of President McKinley. Dur- 
ing the preceding camjDaign they had been 
drawn closer and closer together and a friend- 
ship had grown up between them that was closer 
than any that ever existed between two men 
similarly situated. The President found in this 
strong, energetic man a comrade he could trust 
in every particular. He admired his fearless 
espousal of practical reforms and seconded his 
efforts in that direction on every possible occa- 
sion. On the other hand, Mr. Roosevelt saw in 
President McKinley what many of his closest 
friends failed to recognize : the expansive mind 
that led the people onward toward the heights of 
civil government, but in such a gentle way and 
with such marked deference to their wishes that 



SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. 371 

they often believed tliey themselves were leading 
him. Colonel Eoosevelt recognized the true 
greatness of William McKinley almost from 
their first introduction, and loved him always 
as a younger brother might have done. The 
attempt upon the life of the President unnerved 
him as nothing else had ever done. When he was 
told of it he turned white, and, strong man as 
he is, would have fallen had he not been sup- 
ported. When urged to speak he said : ' ' I am so 
inexpressibly grieved and shocked, and horrified, 
that I can say nothing. ' ' 

How great was the strain on the minds of 
every one during those first hours immediately 
following the shooting is beyond description. 
Some who had never looked upon the wounded 
President lost their reason under the stress of it. 
Then came the assurance of the physicians that 
the President would live and the pendulum 
swung the other way. There was praise and 
thanksgiving everywhere. 

In full confidence that the President would re- 
cover, Vice-President Roosevelt retired into the 
solitude of the forests to add his supplications to 
those that were being offered up to the Author of 
All from every pulpit, as well as from every fire- 



372 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

side in the land, for the President's recovery. 
Nature is his cathedral, and in her solitudes he 
felt himself nearer to Him who holds the fate of 
all nations and all peoples in the hollow of His 
hand. 

When the relapse came and the physicians 
were forced reluctantly to inform the world that 
the President could live but a few hours, a mes- 
sage was sent to inform the Vice-President. He 
was in the Adirondacks, the nearest telegraph 
station being North Creek, New York. As soon 
as the message arrived at the station a number 
of guides were secured, and, having been given 
copies of the dispatch, were hurried away in 
search of the Vice-President. One of them found 
him a little before sundown at the top of Mount 
Marcy and delivered the sorrowful summons. 
The Vice-President immediately started for the 
Tahawas Club, some miles distant. From the 
club-house to North Creek station it is thirty-five 
miles. He reached there at 5:21 the following 
morning and went at once aboard a special train 
that was being held in readiness for him. At 
seven o'clock the party was in Albany, where 
Vice-President Roosevelt was officially informed 
by Secretary of State Hay of the death of Presi- 
dent McKinley. 




THE MOUNTAIN GUIDE FINDS MR. ROOSEVELT IN THE ADIRONDACKS. 
SUMMONS HIM TO THE DYING PRESIDENT'S BEDSIDE 



SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. 373 

The journey from Albany was continued over 
the New York Central Railroad. The special 
train was rushed across the State, arriving in 
Buffalo at 1 :35 p.m. Instead of alighting at the 
Union station, where there was sure to be a crowd 
assembled, Mr. Eoosevelt left the train at the 
Terrace station, where he was met by Mr. Ansley 
Wilcox and Mr. George Williams, with Mr. Will- 
iams ' carriage, together with a detachment of the 
Fourth Signal Corps and a squad of twenty 
mounted police. With the police and the mili- 
taiy moving at a rapid trot in front of the car- 
riage and behind it, Mr. Roosevelt drove swiftly 
up Delaware avenue to the house No. 641, which 
has now become one of the historic mansions of 
the country. 

It is a brick house, painted white, with a row 
of six stately pillars in front of a deep veranda, in 
the old-fashioned style of a hundred years ago. 
It is in one of the most beautiful parts of beauti- 
ful Delaware avenue, and is surrounded by tall, 
overbranching trees, which throw a deep shade 
upon the handsome lawn all the way down to the 
terrace, five or six feet high, which rises from 
the sidewalk, and upon which elevation above the 
street the house stands. 



374 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

Away back in the early part of last century 
the house was used by the United States officers 
in command of the military post at Buffalo, and 
stood in a large park or square that was a part of 
the military reservation. 

The people who gathered about the house as 
the cavalcade came clattering up stood by in 
silence as the Vice-President left the carriage, 
walked rapidly up the terrace steps and en- 
tered the house. The people of Buffalo had 
stood silent for so many days, as if listening for 
the heart-beats in that wounded body of the mar- 
tyred President lying in the Milburn house, that 
the least word seemed an intrusion on the prayer- 
ful silence. There was none spoken now as the 
man on whose shoulders had suddenlj^ fallen all 
the burdens of State passed among them. Only 
the uncovered heads, bowed low, paid tribute to 
the dignity of his great office. 

Vice-President Roosevelt remained in the 
house but a few moments. His first thought was 
of the woman whose ever-loving and gentle help- 
mate had been suddenly taken away, and he 
started at once to pay his respects to her, and 
offer what consolation lay in his power. As he 
returned to the carriage his eye lighted on the 



SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. 375 

military and j)olice escort still drawn up in the 
street. 

''Send them away," he said quickly, **I do 
not like the idea of a guard. ' ' 

As he turned to enter the carriage the Vice- 
President saw that his wishes in reference to the 
escort were being disregarded. The military 
was lining up behind the carriage. 

''Halt," he said. He spoke low and quietly, 
but there was a military ring in the voice that 
commanded obedience. ' ' I will not have a mili- 
tary guard," he said. "These two policemen 
may go with us if you think best. No more." 
The orders were obeyed this time, and the car- 
riage moved away with no other escort than the 
two policemen, one riding on either side. 

Nearly all the Cabinet ministers were at the 
Milburn house when Vice-President Roosevelt 
arrived, but he met them only as a private citizen 
mourning the loss of a very dear friend. The 
hour was too full of grief for words and the Vice- 
President, after a few moments, returned to the 
Wilcox residence. He was followed soon after 
by the members of the Cabinet, and at their 
request took the oath of office which made him 
President of the United States. 



376 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. 

The new President assumed the duties of the 
first magistrate of the land in the library of the 
"Wilcox home. The room was rather small, but 
picturesque, with hea^^ oak trimmings, and mas- 
sive bookcases lining the walls. Those present 
when Mr. Roosevelt took the oath were: Elihu 
Root, Secretary of War ; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, 
Secretary of the Interior ; John D. Long, Secre- 
tary of the Navy ; Charles Emory Smith, Post- 
master-General ; Judge of the Court of Appeals 
Haight ; Mr. John N. Scatcherd ; Mr. and Mrs. 
Ansley Wilcox; Miss Wilcox; Mr. George P. 
Sawyer ; Doctors Mann, Park and Stockton ; Mr. 
and Mrs. Carleton Sprague ; Mr. and Mrs. John 
G. Milburn ; Secretary to the President, Mr. W^ill- 
iam Loeb, Jr. ; Secretary to the deceased Presi- 
dent, Mr. George B. Cortelyou; Mr. and Mrs. 
Chas. Carey; Mr. R.C. Scatcherd; Mr. J.D. Saw- 
yer, and Mr. William Jeffers, official telegrapher, 
in addition to Judge John R. Hazel, of the United 
States District Court, who administered the oath. 

The scene was a most affecting one. Secre- 
tary Root, who, twenty years before, had been 
present at a similar scene, when Vice-President 
Arthur took the oath after the death of President 
Garfield, almost broke down when he requested 




LIBRARY OF MR. ANSLEY WILCOX AT BUFFALO, WHERE PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 
TOOK THE OATH OF OFFICE 



SUCCEEDS TO THE PEESIDENCY. 377 

Mr. Roosevelt, on behalf of the members of the 
Cabinet, to take the prescribed oath. There were 
tears in the eyes of all when Mr. Roosevelt, stand- 
ing in the pretty bay window, with its stained 
glass and heavy hangings forming a soft back- 
gronnd, lifted his hand to take the sublime obli- 
gation. He was pale, and his eyes were dim with 
tears, but the uplifted hand was as steady as 
though carved in marble. Then in low, but firm 
tones, he repeated after Judge Hazel the consti- 
tutional oath of office : 

**I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully 
execute the office of President of the United 
States, and will, to the best of my ability, pre- 
serve, protect and defend the Constitution of the 
United States." 

With the final words the hand of the speaker 
dropped to his side and for an instant his head 
was bowed as if for the Divine blessing. The 
impressive silence was broken by Judge Hazel : 

*'Mr. President, please attach your signa- 
ture. ' ' Turning to a small table he wrote ' ' Theo- 
dore Roosevelt" at the bottom of the prepared 
parchment. Then standing erect, the solemn 
dignity of the great office upon him, he said 
slowly : 



378 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

"In tliis hour of deep and terrible bereave- 
ment, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to 
continue absolutely unbroken the policy of Presi- 
dent McKinley for the peace and prosperity and 
honor of our beloved country. ' ' 

The President then invited the members of 
the Cabinet present to remain in office, urging 
upon them the necessity of their doing so that he 
might the more fully carry out his pledge. He 
said he had been assured that the absent members 
of the Cabinet would retain their portfolios. 
After a moment 's consultation among themselves 
the Secretaries informed the President that they 
had decided to forego the usual custom of pre- 
senting their resignations and would remain as 
he had requested. 

Thus President Eoosevelt, at the very outset, 
paid the highest possible tribute to the late Presi- 
dent McKinley 's genius and worth by adopting 
his policy and expressing his intention of carry- 
ing out all his plans of a public nature that he 
had outlined in any way. 




Reproduced froi 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON HORSEBACK 
Leslie's Weekly, Copyright by Judge Company, 1901. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE NATION. 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TAKES THE HELM OF GOVERNMENT IN 
WASHINGTON — FIRST OFFICIAL ACT — AIMS TO BREAK UP SOLID 
SOUTH BY NEW METHODS — SUMMONS BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
TO A CONFERENCE — APPOINTS REFORM DEMOCRATS TO OFFICE — 
FRIEND OF LABOR. 

President Roosevelt brought to the duties of 
his high office a personality with which the poli- 
ticians of his party found at once they had to 
deal, whether or not they wished to do so. 
All the character-building of his life since, when 
a delicate boy, he had been inspired to virtue by 
the glorious writings of that sage, Plutarch, 
through the years of struggle and adventure 
faintly chronicled in the previous chapters of 
this book, up to this most important epoch in his 
remarkable career, now resulted in a poise that 
marked him at once as a wise man of lofty vision 
and patriotic motives ; a man to whom the word 
duty meant more than all else in life : duty to God, 
duty to country, duty to man, duty to home. His 

379 



380 ' THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

initial acts when he had taken in his hands the 
helm of government answered to his nature, 
growth and development as the overture of a 
grand opera answers to the theme that has gone 
to its creation. ' ' I am going to be President of the 
United States and not of any section," was his 
first declaration to the politicians. "I don't care 
the snap of my fingers for sections or sectional 
lines." To a group of Southern members of 
Congress he said: ''When I was Governor of 
New York I was told I could make four appoint- 
ments in the army. When I sent in the names 
three of the four men were from the South and 
the other was from New York. They were brave 
men, who deserved recognition for services in 
the Spanish War, and it did not matter to me 
what States they were from. ' ' 

The first official act of importance performed 
by President Roosevelt following the initial Cab- 
inet meeting, was signing the papers appoint- 
ing Mr. William Barrett Ridgley, of Springfield, 
Illinois, Comptroller of the Currency. The office 
had been previously held by Charles Gates 
Dawes, of Chicago, who had resigned to enter the 
race for United States Senator. President Mc- 
Kinley had already announced his intention of 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 381 

appointing Mr. Kidgley and President Roosevelt 
gave an earnest of his intention to carry out the 
wishes of his predecessor at the first opportunity. 
His next step was to prove his fealty to the 
merit system. This he did in a most characteris- 
tic way. Booker T. Washington was invited to 
come to Washington and give his views to the 
President concerning the best way to reform the 
political abuses of the South. Mr. Washington 
is a negro, but in the founder of the Tuskegee 
industrial school for the people of liis race, and 
in his manner of conducting it President Roose- 
velt discovered a kindred spirit, one who believed 
in beginning at the root of things and working 
toward a definite end along practical lines. He 
knew Professor Washington to have a better 
understanding of the affairs of the South than 
almost any other living man. He also had reason 
to believe in his honesty and was convinced of 
the soundness of his judgment. The President 
was not looking for prejudiced opinion, but for 
honest, outspoken counsel. He was seeking truth, 
and his sincerity and fearlessness in pursuit of 
it were never better exemplified than when he 
asked advice from this representative of an infe- 
rior race. 



382 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

When Booker T. Washington arrived in the 
capital of the United States upon the invitation 
of the President, he went, as was his custom, to 
a small hotel kept for negroes, named the South- 
ern. All the more pretentious hotels in the capi- 
tal were closed to negroes, even though it might 
be one honored by the President with a summons 
that would have turned the head of many a public 
man high in the councils of his party. To this 
hotel President Roosevelt sent a summons from 
the White House. The President of the United 
States sought this negro, not because he was a 
negro, but because he was an old friend, whose 
judgment he regarded as better than that of most 
men on some questions which were of great 
importance to him as Chief Executive of the 
United States. The problem he had in mind was 
the distribution of federal patronage in the 
Southern States. Twenty-five years of expe- 
rience had not improved the political situation in 
the South. The distribution of federal patron- 
age, albeit through no fault of the President who 
had distributed it, had become a scandal which 
honest citizens of all sections deplored, but for 
which no adequate remedy had been found. This 
patronage had been the bone of profit over which 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 383 

the so-called leaders of both parties snarled and 
fought, paying no heed to those questions which 
were so vital to the interests of the people they 
pretended to serve. For all their boasted 
strength these men had rather weakened than 
strengthened the parties for which they stood. 
It was to their advantage to do so. Democrats 
and Republicans alike had used the patronage 
placed in their hands to keep down party follow- 
ing rather than build it up. They did not desire 
a large party following, because that meant more 
ambitious party workers entitled to a share in the 
spoil. 

Beside the two dominant parties in the South 
there were, in the "Republican party at least, two 
factions that were as bitterly opposed to each 
other as the rival parties could possibly be. Each 
faction claimed to control the negro vote, and 
when it came to Presidential nominations the fac- 
tion that espoused the cause of the winning can- 
didate demanded the distribution of all the offices. 
They were opposed by the other faction in every 
act, and nothing was done or left undone that 
did not provoke bitter opposition. 

All this was familiar to President Roosevelt. 
He had seen it exemplified in every national con- 



384 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

vention for twenty years. In the campaign of 
1896 these two factions of white Republican lead- 
ers had espoused the cause of McKinley or that of 
Eeed. The party conventions were mere strug- 
gles for control by the leaders. The negro voters 
would have been satisfied with either McKinley 
or Eeed for the candidate. But when the former 
was nominated and elected, the white men who 
had supported him in convention claimed con- 
trol of the federal patronage. This was not dif- 
ferent from the claims of politicians in other 
States. The difference appeared in the fact that 
these few white men claimed the offices them- 
selves. They did not recommend negroes to 
office. What right had the negro to an office? 
The spoils belonged to those who controlled the 
negro vote and not to the negro who gave the vote 
to his controller. 

These white leaders were jDrofessional politi- 
cians. They lived by politics, and when they 
were on the winning side, fed well. When they 
were out they made up for their hunger by abus- 
ing those who were in. There had been in each 
Southern State about twice as many Republican 
politicians as there were federal offices. There 
were two white men claiming each available 



I 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 385 

place, and contesting for it. The one that got it 
was the other's political enemy, fighting him 
during the administration. The man who was 
out tried to destroy the man who was in. These 
contests between professional office-seekers who 
claimed to control the negro vote had made the 
whole subject of federal patronage in the South a 
public scandal. 

These white leaders had not strengthened the 
Republican party in the South. On the contrary, 
they had weakened it. The white leaders desired 
to keep the Republican party a negro party under 
their control, because they could use the preju- 
dice against the negro to prevent him from seek- 
ing office, and leave the whole question of patron- 
age to them. 

President Roosevelt's purpose was to change 
all this and, if possible, make the South as free 
politically as the North, at least. In the merit 
system he saw a way to reform the present abuse. 
He proposed to put the office-seel^r from the 
South to the same test as the office-seeker from 
the North. He wanted primarily good men for 
office-holders. He wanted the postmaster named 
for any town or community to possess the confi- 
dence of the people he served. He wanted men 



386 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

of good ability and good reputation for collect- 
ors, marshals and judges. He did not care 
whether they controlled the negro vote or not. 
He preferred they should not come with such a 
claim. He doubted the qualifications of such men 
for office. He did not propose to ignore the negro 
in politics. The negroes had been ignored by the 
men who pretended to lead them, and this the 
President desired to correct in so far as he was 
able. 

For these reasons he sent for Booker T. 
Washington. He felt he could trust this man. 
And the President of the United States and the 
son of a slave sat for several hours in the White 
House discussing problems of the greatest im- 
portance to future generations of both races. 
And when they parted the negro bore in his hand 
an invitation to ex-Governor Thomas Goode 
Jones, of Alabama, a Democrat, to accept the 
appointment of a district judgeship, 

*'If I cannot make the Republican party in 
the South the dominant party, I can at least make 
it respectable, ' ' the President is reported to have 
said. "I can appoint good men to office, even 
though I have to select Democrats." He de- 
manded that the men appointed to federal offices 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 387 

should be men above reproach, and that their 
appointments should be made without regard to 
the race question. Professor Washington told 
President Eoosevelt that he could not recommend 
a single man for appointment, but he named some 
men in whom he saw the qualities necessary to 
the settlement of the grave questions confronting 
the nation in the South. Those men were Demo- 
crats. They had acted with the Democratic 
party, not because they believed in its national 
politics, but because they would not act under the 
leadership of patronage brokers who controlled 
the Eepublican organization in their States, 

Professor Washington convinced President 
Roosevelt that some of these men saw the danger 
to popular government in the present system, 
and that they were patriotic enough to help him 
to change it for a better system. The President 
decided to try and build up a Republican party 
in the South that should be self-respecting and 
independent. His first move in that direction 
was the message to ex-Senator Jones. As soon 
as he was assured that the appointment would be 
accepted the President tendered the district 
judgeship to the patriotic and able citizen of Ala- 
bama. In doing this President Roosevelt chal- 



388 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

lenged all the precedents of party, and struck out 
on new and original lines. Judge Jones 's qualifi- 
cations for tlie office were of the best, and no com- 
plaint could be made on that score. But the fact 
that President Roosevelt, at the very outset of 
his administration, should make such a wide 
departure from the practice previously adhered 
to, caused great consternation in the camps of the 
professional politicians, both North and South, 
and the President was deluged with protests 
from all quarters. But Mr. Roosevelt took no 
further heed of this demand of the partisans who 
still clung to the theory that ''to the victors 
belong the spoils ' ' than he had to the same class 
of men who appealed to him when he was Police 
Commissioner of New York. He replied that the 
merit system was as binding on the President of 
the United States as on the head of any of the 
departments, and proceeded in his search for 
able, honest and sincere men to fill the offices. 

President Roosevelt carried into his work at 
Washington all the tireless industry that had dis- 
tinguished him in every vocation. He was at his 
desk at 9 :30 in the morning and gave himself no 
rest until 4 :30 in the afternoon, with the excep- 
tion of a short break at the noon hour, when he 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 389 

walked home for luncheon. A correspondent 
thus describes the President's activities: 

*' President Roosevelt is out of bed by 7 
o'clock and as a rule is at the breakfast table 
shortly after 8 o 'clock. He leaves for the White 
House as soon as breakfast is over. Once he is in 
his big working room things begin to buzz. Mr. 
Vf illiam Loeb, who is in reality his secretary, his 
stenographer and his confidential friend, hands 
him the letters necessary for him to see. These 
he reads, dictates replies and sees visitors all 
at the same time. ' ' 

This was during the first few days in Wash- 
ington, while he was making his home with his 
brother-in-law. Commander Cowles, of the navy. 
Meanwhile the children were investigating the 
rooms in the executive mansion, which was to be 
their future home. They ran up and down the 
long halls, rode in the elevators, chose the coziest 
corners for their future playing grounds, and 
enjoyed themselves as only children can when 
taking possession of things that are new and 
strange. Both the President and Mrs. Roosevelt 
believe in giving the children as much liberty as 
possible, trusting to wise instruction beforehand 
to keep them within bounds, and there are few 



390 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. 

families in the world where gladness is so pro- 
nounced as in this household. Jacob A. Riis, who 
has long been a close friend of President Roose- 
velt, writes thus simply and familiarly of him to 
the Sunday School Times: "He is far from 
being a hard man. His heart is as tender as a 
woman 's where it may be, as hard as steel where 
it must be. He loves his children as William 
McKinley did. When he was Police Commis- 
sioner of New York, we would sometimes go 
together to the Italian school of the Children's 
Aid Societ}^ or some kindred place, and I loved 
of all things to hear him talk to the little ones. 
They did, too. I fancy he left behind him on 
every one of those trips a streak of little patriots 
to whom, as they grow up, their hour with 
'Teddy' will be a whole manual of good citizen- 
ship. I know one little girl out on Long Island 
who is to-day hugging the thought of the hand- 
shake he gave her as the most precious of her 
memories. And so do I, for I saw him spy her— 
poor, pale little thing, in her threadbare jacket- 
way back in the crowd of school children that 
swarmed about his train, and I saw him dash 
into the surging tide like a strong swimmer strik- 
ing out from the shore, make a way through the 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. ^ 391 

shouting mob of youngsters clear to where she 
was on the outskirts, looking on hopelessly, lift 
and shake her hand as if his very heart were in 
it, and then catch the moving train on the run, 
while she looked after it, her face one big, happy 
smile. That was Roosevelt, every inch of him. 

''Is such a man safe as the executive of this 
country of blessed homes ? His own is one of the 
happiest I know of, for love is at the helm. It is 
his harbor of refuge, which he insists on preserv- 
ing sacred to him and his, whatever storms rage 
without. And in this also he is faithful to the 
highest of American ideals, to his countr}^ 's best 
traditions. The only time I saw him so angry 
as to nearly lose his temper was when he was 
told that his enemies in the police department, 
who never grasped the kind of man they had to 
do with, or were able to do it, were shadowing 
him nightly from his office to his home, thinking 
to catch him in some wrong. He flushed hotly: 

" 'Wliat,' he said, 'going home to my 
babies ? ' But his anger died in a sad little laugh 
of contempt. That was their way, not his. When, 
soon after, the opportunity came to him to pay 
them back in their own coin, he spurned it with 
loathing. He fought fair even with scoundrels. 



392 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

''That kind of a man is he who has now 
become the chief of our great nation. A just man 
and fair ; a man of duty and principle, never by 
any chance of expediency, political or personal ; 
a reverent man of few public professions, but of 
practice, private and public, ever in accord with 
the highest ideals of Christian manliness. In 
fact, I know of no one who typifies better the 
Christian gentleman. ' ' 

This is the tribute of a man who knows the 
President as well as one man can know another. 
They worked together for two years trying to 
crush out vice and banish poverty from the 
unfortunate of the great city of New York. It 
was a place to try men 's souls, and whatever was 
bad or dangerous in a man was sure to come out 
there. And he who was his close companion 
through that battle of morals against vice de- 
clares : ' ' In no man 's hands that lives and owns 
American citizenship to-day are the country's 
honor and welfare safer than in Theodore Roose- 
velt's." 

One of the first men to have the ear of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt was Leonard A. Wood, Governor- 
General of Cuba. They had been comrades since 
they first met in Washington, when neither had 



CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 393 

any great chances for political preferment. They 
had gone out to war together, and now they sat 
in the White House, the one at the top of the lad- 
der, and the other with like responsibilities of 
a less weight upon his shoulders. President 
Roosevelt expressed a great desire to know as 
much as possible about the situation in Cuba. He 
believed in giving the Cubans full power over 
their country, and then leaving it to them whether 
they should finally become a part of the United 
States or not. 

President Roosevelt welcomed the representa- 
tives of labor, and told them he was anxious to 
talk with them, to know their plans, to help them 
in every way to better the condition of honest 
toil. He gave ready audience to every citizen 
who came to him with any purpose, being as 
democratic in his ideas and practice as it is pos- 
sible for any one to be. In a word, he was carry- 
ing out his promise concerning the policy of his 
predecessor, and at the same time fulfilling the 
pledge he made to the country that he was 
''going to be President of the United States." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE FUTURE. 

WHAT MAY REASONABLY BE EXPECTED FROM SUCH A PRESIDENT 
OF SUCH A NATION— BELIEVING IN THE MONROE DOCTRINE 
AND AMERICAN CONTROL OF THE CANAL AT THE ISTHMUS, IN 
RECIPROCITY AND EXPANSION, MR. ROOSEVELT IS STRONG, 
UPRIGHT, HONEST AND AGGRESSIVE, AND IMPLICITLY TRUSTED 
BY A UNITED PEOPLE — AMERICA 'S GOLDEN ERA. 

The life of a nation is much like the life of a 
man. It begins with an infancy of weakness, of 
reliance upon others, a seeking for guidance in 
the experience of those who are older, in the con- 
servation of all the forces available, and the 
development to a strength which is not taken 
seriously by the neighbor nations of the earth. 
Extension of territory and accumulation of 
wealth follow, with increasing time for the arts 
and luxuries which opportunity brings, and then 
the serene stages where full growth is achieved, 
and when the hot passions of youth have faded 
into the dignified serenity of established position. 
In this period is the nation's peril. Shakespeare 

394 



THE FUTURE. 395 

has told lis of the ' ' Seven Ages of Man " ; of the 
progress from infancy, through strength, to the 
period of decay, when human senses all have 
vanished, yet life still lurks in the slowly-pulsing 
heart ; and after that comes dissolution, and the 
gathering again of elements in other formations ; 
the disappearance of factors as they had been 
known before, and their reassembling in newer 
combinings, that shall begin again the strange 
experiment of life. Some flash into glorious 
promise, and pass before that promise is fulfilled. 
Some linger superfluous upon the stage, the glow 
of a splendid past behind them, the certainty of 
extinction before. 

So with the nations that have made proces- 
sion across the page .of history. It is fair to 
gather from the record of those that have van- 
ished some rules that must apply to those that 
still exist ; for those departed have trod one way, 
and all their exits have led through a single gate. 

This nation we call the United States has seen 
its time of infancy. It passed impetuous boy- 
hood in 1812. It proved adventurous in 1848. 
It came to quick blows in its full maturity, and 
reveled in the exuberance of unmeasured strength 
from 1861 to 1865. Then came the time of judg- 



396 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

ment, of serene self-valuation, of conscious 
equality with any other, and then utility arrived. 
Opportunity was seized— opportunity was made. 
All the resources that lay in the land, that lurked 
in the air, that thrilled in the brains and the 
hearts of men were developed, until the nation in 
wealth, in power and in magnificence stood at the 
very apex of existence. After that one thing of 
two must come. In Eome, riches and culture 
crumbled the foundation stones of empire ; and 
she who from her seven hills had ruled the world 
passed through the gate, and was buried in that 
cemetery of the nations beside Greece, and Baby- 
lon, and distant Nineveh. There was a time in 
each when its armies marched whithersoever they 
pleased, and when its ships came from every port 
in the known world with gold in the ingot, with 
silks in the bale. But a nation drunk with power 
or debauched with vice is a nation diseased and 
hurrying on to death. 

Perhaps no country in the whole lapse of time 
has possessed the genius, the wealth or the power 
of the United States at the beginning of the 
twentieth century. If the leaders of the nation 
should abandon themselves to the gratification t)f 
Bense, if the corrosion of idleness should eat at the 



THE FUTURE. 397 

irou of vigor and the wine of indulgence dis- 
solve the pearls of purity, there could be but a 
single ending to the history so splendidly begun, 
so magnificently maintained. It is providential 
that in an era of great possibilities— for either 
good or evil— the happier fate should be assured 
by the rise of this man ; that whatever of moral 
malaria might have fastened upon the civic 
health of the people was corrected by the pres- 
ence of a man of vigorous right, a prophet of the 
strenuous life, a citizen who teaches the doctrine 
''Trust in God, and help yourself." It is provi- 
dential that the right man came to the nation at 
the juncture in its history when it needed him. 
And it is a matter worthy of reflection that his 
whole life seems to have been dedicated to a 
preparation for the work which now engrosses 
him. Combined in his veins, as Mrs. Boj^lan has 
well said in her splendid poem, runs the blood of 
master races. He conies of a family which flour- 
ished on American soil long before the American 
nation was dreamed of. Ilic parentage, his 
youth, his training, his education up to arrival 
at manhood, have all been steps in his prepara- 
tion, as clearly as was the anointing with oil 
which set apart the son of Jesse for the throne of 



398 THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 

Israel. His political training, his experience in 
office, his hunting, his conduct of business affairs, 
his virile, manly strength and heroic soul— all 
are the attributes which the man of the hour 
needed— which the man of the hour must have, 
or the opportunity of the hour will have vanished 
forever. In an unusual degree the arrival of this 
man, so equipped, and at the time, is of the very 
greatest value to the nation. There can be no 
tendency to idleness or enervation while the in- 
dustry and energy of such a man provide an 
incentive to worthy deeds for the youth of 
America. 

Patrick Henry, in that wonderful speech 
before the Virginia convention, said : ' * There is 
but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and 
that is the lamp of experience. ' ' The citizen of 
the United States can know no better rule by 
which to decide what shall be the mission and 
achievement of his country than to study the ten- 
dency of the past, and the probable course of the 
men in control at critical stages. America 's his- 
tory is, or should be, in the possession of the sons 
of the Republic. It has been a steady progress 
toward a definite objective, from the very begin- 
ning. In a way, that progress has been more a 



THE FUTURE. 399 

result of extraordinary conditions than of cohe- 
sive, concerted planning. The critical time came 
with the close of the nineteenth century. With 
power at the flood, with influence untried, with 
every faculty up to maturity fully developed, 
there waited possibilities for immeasurable good, 
for unlimited growth abroad, and consequent 
unlimited advancement at home; or the proba- 
bility of growth's cessation— with the inevitable 
beginning of deterioration, moral and physical, 
which has come to every people who, content with 
achievement, has abandoned progress. 

With that histoiy and tendency known, with 
the mighty forces understood, the manner of men 
at the head of affairs in the crisis completes the 
data required in forming judgment as to what 
the future of the nation shall be. Very fortu- 
nately, Theodore Roosevelt has placed himself 
on record as to the course he believes his country 
should follow, and a definite pledge as to the 
direction in which his influence shall be exerted. 
At Minneapolis, Minnesota, he delivered a speech 
September 2, before the blow at his chief had fal- 
len at Buffalo; and in those lines the lamp by 
which the student may be guided is set aflame. 



400 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. 

From that speech the following illustrative pas- 
sages are taken : 

In his admirable series of studies of twentieth-century 
problems, Dr. Lyman Abbott has pointed out that we are a 
nation of pioneers; that the first colonists to our shores were 
pioneers, and that pioneers selected out from among the 
descendants of these early pioneers, mingled with others selected 
afresh from the old world, pushed westward into the wilderness 
and laid the foundations for new commonwealths. 

They were men of hope and expectation, of enterprise and 
energy; for the men of dull content or more dull despair had 
no part in the great movement into and across the new world. 

Our country has been populated by pioneers, and there- 
fore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive 
power than any other in the wide world. 

You whom I am now addressing stand for the most part 
but one generation removed from these pioneers. You are typi- 
cal Americans, for you have done the great, the characteristic, 
the typical work of our American life. In making homes and 
carving out careers for yourselves and your children, you have 
built up this State. Throughout our history the success of the 
homemaker has been but another name for the upbuilding of 
the nation. 

We have but little room among our people for the timid, 
the irresolute, and the idle; and it is no less true that there is 
scant room in the world at large for the nation with mighty 
thews that dares not to be great. 

Sometimes we hear those who do not work spoken of with 
envy. Surely the wilfully idle need arouse in the breast of a 
healthy man no emotion stronger than that of contempt — at the 
outside no emotion stronger than angry contempt. The feeling 
of envy would have in it an admission of inferiority on our 
part, to which the men who know not the sterner joys of life 
are not entitled. 



THE FUTUEE. 401 

Poverty is a bitter thing, but it is not as bitter as the 
existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral and intellec- 
tual flabbiness to which those doom themselves who elect to 
spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits, the 
pursuit of mere pleasure, as a sufficient end in itself. 

The wilfully idle man, like the wilxully barren woman, has 
no place in a sane, healthy and vigorous community. Moreover, 
the gross and hideous selfishness for which each stands defeats 
even its own miserable aims. Exactly as infinitely the happiest 
woman is she who has borne and brought up many healthy chil- 
dren, so infinitely the happiest man is he who has toiled hard 
and successfully in his life work. 

The work may be done in a thousand different ways; with 
the brain or the hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop ; 
if it is honest work, honestly done, and well worth doing, that 
is all we have a right to fisk. 

Every father and mother here, if they are wise, will bring 
up their children not to shirk difficulties, but to meet and over- 
come them; not to strive after a life of ignoble ease, but to 
strive to do their duty, first to themselves and their families, 
and then to the whole State; and this duty must inevitably 
take the shape of work in some form or other. 

It is not possible ever to insure prosperity merely by law. 
Something for good can be done by law, and bad laws can do 
an infinity of mischief; but, after all, the best law can only 
prevent wrong and injustice and give to the thrifty, the far- 
seeing and the hard-working a chance to exercise to the best 
advantage their special and peculiar abilities. 

No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our 
legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, 
between interest and interest. 

All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable on the 
one hand to weaken individual initiative, and on the other hand 
that, in a constantly increasing number of cases, we shall find 



402 THEODOKE KOOSEVELT. 

it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we 
have shackled force. 

It is not only highly desirable, but necessary, that there 
should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests 
of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the 
honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage 
under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous com- 
petitors who have no conscience, and will do right only under 
fear of punishment. 

There is but the scantiest justification for most of the 
outcry against the men of wealth as such, and it ought to be 
unnecessary to state that any appeal which directly or indirectly 
leads to suspicion and hatred among ourselves, which tends to 
limit opportunity, and, therefore, to shut the door of success 
against poor men of talent, and, finally, which entails the pos- 
sibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack upon the fun- 
damental properties of American citizensliip. 

Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go 
up or go down together. 

Yet more and more it is evident that the State, and, if nec- 
essary, the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision 
and control as regards the great corporations which are its 
creatures; particularly as regards the great business combina- 
tions which derive a portion of their importance from the 
existence of some monopolistic tendency. 

The right should be exercised with caution and self-restraint, 
but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises. 

So much for our duties, each to himself and each to his 
neighbor, within the limits of our own country. But our coun- 
try, as it strides forward with ever-increasing rapidity to a fore- 
most place among the world powers, must necessarily find, more 
and more, that it has world duties also. 

There are excellent people who believe that we can shirk 
these duties and yet retain our self-respect; but these good 
people are in error. Other good people seek to deter us from 



THE FUTURE. 403 

treading the path of hard but lofty duty by bidding us remem- 
ber that all nations that have achieved greatness, that have 
expanded and played their part as world powers, have in the 
end passed away. So they have; so have all others. The weak 
and the stationary have vanished as surely as, and more rapidly 
than, those whose citizens felt within them the life that impels 
generous souls to great and noble effort. 

This is another way of stating the universal law of death, 
which is itself part of the universal law of life. The man who 
works, the man who does great deeds, in the end dies as surely 
as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth's surface; but he 
leaves behind him the great fact that he has done his work well. 
So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to be 
great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny 
of the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation 
that has played the part of the weakling must also die; and, 
whereas the nation that has done nothing leaves nothing behind 
it, the nation that has done a great work really continues, though 
in changed form, forevermore. The Eoman has passed away, 
exactly as all nations of antiquity which did not expand when 
he expanded have passed away; but their very memory has 
vanished, while he himself is still a living force throughout the 
wide world in our entire civilization of to-day, and will so con- 
tinue through countless generations, through untold ages. 

It is because we believe with all our heart and soul in the 
greatness of this country, because we feel the thrill of hardy 
life in our veins, and are confident that to us is given the priv- 
ilege of playing a leading part in the century that has just 
opened, that we hail with eager delight the opportunity to do 
whatever task Providence may allot us. 

We admit with all sincerity that our first duty is within our 
own household ; that we must not merely talk, but act, in favor 
of cleanliness and decency and righteousness in all political, 
social and civic matters. No prosperity and no glory can save 
a nation that is rotten at heart. We must ever keep the core 



404 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

of our national being sound, and see to it that not only our 
citizens in private life, but above all, our statesmen in public 
life, practice the old, common-place virtues which from time 
immemorial have lain at the root of all true national well- 
being. 

Yet while this is our first duty, it is not our whole duty. 
Exactly as each man, while doing first his duty to his wife and 
the children within his home, must yet, if he hopes to amount 
to much, strive mightily in the world outside his home, so our 
nation, while first of all seeing to its own domestic well-being, 
must not shrink from playing its part among the great nations 
without. 

It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self- 
glorification, and above all in loose-tongued denunciation of 
other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with 
a foreign power I hope that we shall always strive to speak 
courteously and respectfully of that foreign power. 

Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then 
let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice 
being done us in return. 

Let us further make it evident that we use no words which 
we are not prepared to back up with deeds, and that, while our 
speech is always moderate, we are ready and willing to make it 
good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of 
that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must 
ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people. 

This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe 
doctrine. There is not the least need of blustering about it. 
Still less should it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandize- 
ment at the expense of any other American State. 

But most emphatically we must make it evident that we 
intend on this point ever to maintain the old American position. 
Indeed, it is hard to understand how any man can take any 
other position now that we are all looking forward to the 
building of the isthmian canal. 



THE FUTURE. 405 

Commercially, as far as this doctrine is concerned, all we 
wish is a fair field and no favor; but if we are wise we shall 
strenuously insist that under no pretext whatsoever shall there 
be any territorial aggrandizement on American soil by any 
European power, and this, no matter what form the territorial 
aggrandizement may take. 

We most earnestly hope and believe that the chance of our 
having any hostile military complication with any foreign 
power is small. But that there will come a strain, a jar, here 
and there, from commercial and agricultural— that is, from 
industrial— competition is almost inevitable. 

Here, again, we have got to remember that our first duty is 
to our own people, and yet that we can get justice best by 
doing justice. We must continue the policy that has been so 
brilliantly successful in the past, and so shape our economic 
system as to give every advantage to the skill, energy and intel- 
ligence of our farmers, merchants, manufacturers and wage- 
workers ; and yet we must also remember, in dealing with other 
nations, that benefits must be given when benefits are sought. 

Throughout a large part of our national career our history 
has been one of expansion, the expansion being of different 
kinds at different times. This expansion is not a matter of 
regret but of pride. It is vain to tell a people as masterful as 
ours that the spirit of enterprise is not safe. The true Ameri- 
can has never feared to run risks when the prize to be won was 
of sufficient value. 

No nation capable of self-government and of developing by 
its own efforts a sane and orderly civilization, no matter how 
small it may be, has anything to fear from us. Our dealings 
with Cuba illustrate this, and should be forever a subject of 
just national pride. 

We speak in no spirit of arrogance when we state as a sim- 
ple historic fact that never in recent years has any great nation 
acted with such disinterestedness as we have shown in Cuba. 
We freed the island from the Spanish yoke. We then earnestly 



406 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

did our best to help the Cubans in the establishment of free 
education, of law and order, of material prosperity, of the 
cleanliness necessary to sanitary well-being in their great cities. 

We did all this at great expense of treasure, at some expense 
of life; and now we are establishing them in a free and inde- 
pendent commonwealth, and have asked in return nothing what- 
ever save that at no time shall their independence be prostituted 
to the advantage of some foreign rival of ours or so as to men- 
ace our well-being. To have failed to ack this would have 
amounted to national stultification on our part. 

In the Philippines we have brought peace, and we are at 
this moment giving them such freedom and self-government 
as they could never under any conceivable conditions have 
obtained had we turned them loose to sink into a welter of 
blood and confusion, or to become the prey of some strong 
tyranny without or within. We are not trying to subjugate a 
people; we are trying to develop them and make them a law- 
abiding, industrious and educated people, and we hope ulti- 
mately a self-governing people. We have done our duty to 
ourselves, and we have done the higher duty of promoting the 
civilization of mankind. 

The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply 
the hand-maiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. 
Law and order enforced by justice and by strength lie at the 
foundation of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, 
else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute 
firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end 
that there is no justice and no law— nothing but the rule of 
disorderly and unscrupulous strength. 

Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without 
the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who 
defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral 
or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the 
law-abiding spirit at home if we are permanently to succeed; 
and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad. 



THE FUTURE. 407 

Barbarism has and can have no place in a civilized world. 
It is our duty toward the people living in barbarism to see that 
they are freed from their chains, and we can only free them by 
destroying barbarism itself. The missionary, the merchant and 
the soldier may each have to play a part in this destruction and 
in the consequent uplifting of the people. 

Exactly as it is the duty of a civilized power scrupulously 
to respect the rights of all weaker civilized powers and gladly 
to help those who are struggling toward civilization, so it is 
its duty to put down savagery and barbarism. 

As in such a work human instruments must be used, and as 
human instruments are imperfect, at times there will be injus- 
tice; at times merchant, or soldier, or even missionary may do 
wrong. Let us instantly condemn and rectify such wrong when 
it occurs, and if possible punish the wrongdoer. But, shame, 
thrice shame to us if we are so foolish as to make such occa- 
sional wrongdoing an excuse for failing to perform a great and 
righteous task. 

So it must be in the future. We gird up our loins as a 
nation with the stern purpose to play our part manfully in win- 
ning the ultimate triumph, and therefore we turn scornfully 
aside from the paths of mere ease and idleness and with 
unfaltering steps tread the rough road of endeavor, smiting 
down the wrong and battling for the right as Greatheart smote 
and battled in Bunyan's immortal story. 

September 5, 1901, the day before his assassi- 
nation, President McKinley delivered a speech 
at the Pan-American Exposition, in Buffalo, 
which fairly and clearly expressed his view of the 
nation's obligations and duties, and his estimate 
of the Republic's immeasurable possibilities. 
The address has become prophetic. The views 



408 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. 

must be regarded as the crystallized sentiment 
of the nation, and the policy as that which the 
American people will resolutely follow. From 
that notable speech these words are chosen: 

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record 
the world's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enter- 
prise and intellect of the people and quicken human genius. 
They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily 
life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of informa- 
tion to the student. To the commissioners of the Dominion of 
Canada and the British colonies, the French colonies, the repub- 
lics of Mexico and of Central and South America, and the 
commissioners of Cuba and Porto Eico, who share with us in 
this undertaking, we give the hand of fellowship and felicitate 
with them upon the triumphs of art, science, education and 
manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century. 

Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. The same 
important news is read, though in different languages, the same 
day in all Christendom. The telegraph keeps us advised of 
what is occurring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, with 
more or less accuracy, the plans and purposes of the nations. 
Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known 
in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people 
extend beyond their owa national boundaries into the remotest 
parts of the earth. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a 
mile of steam railroad on the globe. Now there are enough 
miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a 
line of electric telegraph ; now we have a vast mileage travers- 
ing all lands and all seas. God and man have linked the nations 
together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. 
And as we are brought more and more in touch with each other 
the less occasion is there for misunderstanding and the stronger 



THE FUTUKE. 409 

the disposition when we have differences to adjust them in the 
court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the settle- 
ment of international disputes. 

Our industrial enterprises, which have grown to such great 
proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and 
the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has devel- 
oped so enormously and our products have so multiplied that 
the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate 
attention. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what 
we have. No other policy will get more. In these times of 
marvelous business energy and gain we ought to be looking to 
the future, strengthening the weak places in our industrial and 
commercial systems that we may be ready for any storm or 
strain. 

By sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our 
home production, we shall extend the outlets for our increasing 
surplus. A system which provides a mutual exchange of com- 
modities is manifestly essential to the continued healthful 
growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied 
security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or 
nothing. If such a thing were possible it would not be best for 
us or for those with whom we deal. We should take from our 
customers such of their products as we can use without harm to 
our industries and labor. 

Eeciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful 
industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly 
established. What we produce beyond our domestic consump- 
tion must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved 
through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can 
and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and produc- 
tions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. 

The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our 
trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars 
are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade rela- 
tions will prevent reprisals. Eeciprocity treaties are in har- 



410 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

mony with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are 
not. 

If, perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for 
revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, 
why should they not be employed to extend and promote our 
markets abroad? 

Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New lines 
of steamers have already been put in commission between the 
Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the west- 
ern coast of Mexico and Central and South America. These 
should be followed up with direct steamship lines between the 
eastern coast of the United States and South American ports. 

One of the needs of the times is direct commercial lines 
from our vast fields of production to the fields of consumption 
that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage to having 
the thing to sell is to have the convenience to carry it to the 
buyer. 

We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have 
more ships. They mvist be under the American flag, built and 
manned and owned by Americans, These will not only be 
profitable in a commercial sense; they will be messengers of 
peace and amity wherever they go. 

We must build the isthmian canal, which will unite the two 
oceans and give a straight line of water communication with 
the western coast of Central and South America and Mexico. 
The construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed. 

In the furtherance of these objects of national interest and 
concern you are performing an important part. 

The good work will go on. It cannot be stopped. These 
buildings will disappear; this creation of art and beauty and 
industry will perish from sight, but their influence will 
remain to 

• Make it live beyond its too short living 
With praises and thanksgiving." 

Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe 



THE FUTURE. 411 

prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors and like 
blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth. 

The day of President McKinley's death, the 
day Theodore Koosevelt assumed the duties and 
recorded the oath which made him chief execu- 
tive of the nation, he pledged himself to carry out 
the policy of his predecessor, in every detail 
which went to the peace and prosperity, the liber- 
ties and the laws of his country. Here, then, is the 
''lamp" by which a forecast may be fashioned. 
The United States will maintain, in its domestic 
economy, the policies which had affected trade 
and commerce in the past. There will be a read- 
justment of tariff duties, a removal of the tax 
where it is no longer necessary, a reduction where 
that can be done in accordance with public inter- 
est, and an extension and encouragement of trade 
with the nations beyond our borders. There will 
be a jealous preservation of the Monroe doctrine, 
yet a maintaining of peace in the family of na- 
tions. And the canal across the Central Amer- 
ican isthmus will be built by Americans, financed 
with American money, and kept within the con- 
trol of Americans, whether peace or war shall 
come. 

We know the materials which constitute the 



412 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

nation. We know the tendency of public men 
in this portentous era. And we know the temper 
of the man whose influence, above that of other 
men, shall direct the advance of the great Repub- 
lic. Nothing more conclusively illustrating 
President Roosevelt's position in this juncture 
can be presented than his recent remarks when 
the subject of his reelection to his high office was 
suggested to him, and was used as a means of 
inducing him to appoint to office a man whom 
he had learned was unfit. 

* ' I am going to select the best men for public 
positions. Men appointed to high public places 
must be high in morals and in many other re- 
spects. If the American people care to show 
their approval of my course as President during 
the three years and a half I have to serve, by 
placing me at the head of the Republican ticket 
in 1904, I should feel deeply grateful. It would 
be an honor it would be difficult far any man to 
decline. But if I have to pander to any cliques, 
combinations, or movements for their approval, 
I would not give a snap of my finger for it, or a 
nomination for it under such circumstances. My 
endorsement must come from the people of the 
country. ' ' 



THE FUTURE. 413 

When an earlier triumph came to him, Mr. 
Roosevelt was asked by a friend what had been 
his motto through life, and he replied : "I have 
never had any motto, except this: 'What thy 
hands find to do, do it with thy might. ' ' ' 

This is the story of Theodore Roosevelt, 
twenty-sixth President of the United States, in 
the hour when the nation enters its golden era. 



THE END. 




Copyright 1900 by Rockwood. 






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